Balladonia Truck Driver Encounter and Missing Time, Eyre Highway, 1978

Balladonia sits on the western edge of the Nullarbor Plain. It is the first stop east of Norseman, 192 km away on the Eyre Highway. East of the roadhouse runs the 146.6 km straight to Caiguna, one of the longest straight stretches of road in the world.

In early February 1978 a 30-year-old truck driver was making the crossing overnight, east to west. He had left Border Village on the South Australian border and passed Madura. He has never been named.

Sunday 5 February 1978. About 4 am. Somewhere 20 to 30 miles east of Balladonia.

He saw "a large spotlight coming towards me". He took it for another vehicle and flashed his high beam several times. The light did not change. Then he could see "a large diamond shaped light coming towards me", with red, blue, green and yellow lights reflecting off the road directly below it. The white light blinded him for a moment. He never knew whether it passed overhead or veered aside. He stopped and got out. He could not see anything.

A couple of minutes later he drove on. On his right was a round, dull white light, apparently 2 to 3 inches across, travelling at the same speed as the truck. He stopped. It stopped. He drove. It moved. It vanished as he drove into Balladonia, then reappeared on his left. A second truck, coming from the west, pulled up to check on him. By then the object had gone.

It came back. He switched his headlights off while driving, and the round light became an elongated shape, about 17 inches by 6 inches high, dull white with black segments. He wondered if they were windows. When the headlights came on again, it disappeared. Later it returned on his right, round once more. At about 4.30 am, as the sky grew brighter, it was gone.

His statement holds a stranger story. Between Madura and a point east of Balladonia he could not remember anything. He recalled "talking to somebody about inventing something". Somebody wanted him to take credit for their invention. He would not agree. He also remembered "speaking with two voices".

His next memory was 4 miles east of Balladonia, stopping to refuel. He still wore his tee-shirt and Amco jacket. His shorts were elsewhere in the cab. He had picked up no hitch hikers and had nobody with him.

The statement reached Perth researcher Jeff Bell. Bill Chalker wrote it up in "Australian 'Interrupted Journeys'", the lead article of the MUFON UFO Journal for August 1980, describing a lapse of memory of 3 to 3½ hours. Keith Basterfield later listed it in his catalogue of Australian abductions and in his Nullarbor catalogue, which carries the full statement. No record of any government investigation has been found.

No source alleges a hoax, and none offers a mundane answer. Patrick Gross rates the case "Insufficient data". The original material is partly illegible, there is a single anonymous witness, and no investigation is documented. Questions stay open. He had been driving through the night. The first object was at first taken for a vehicle's spotlight. And a sky growing brighter at 4.30 am sits awkwardly with the season.

The retellings grew. John Schuessler recorded that the driver spoke to "two beings" and listed a possible abduction. Albert Rosales wrote of an entity, and a light that "pursued" him. In the witness's own words there were only voices, and a light that kept pace. Chalker borrowed the phrase "interrupted journey" from the Betty and Barney Hill case, and on the Nullarbor it stuck.