The Chowerup Lands Inspector Sighting

In 1951, Australia was only beginning to talk about flying saucers. Public interest grew between 1950 and 1952. Reports went to the RAAF and the Department of Civil Aviation, and the first civilian UFO group would not form until 1952. Chowerup sits far from all of that. A small rural locality in the Shire of Boyup Brook, in the South West of Western Australia, on the traditional lands of the Kaneang Noongar people. Its 1923 hall had served as the school until 1950.

Wednesday, November 28, 1951. 11:03 pm. An inspector with the Lands and Surveys Department at Bridgetown was parked in the bush in his station wagon, the ABC news on the radio. He saw what he first took to be an aircraft, flying at about 600 metres. He quickly realised it was definitely no plane. It had no wings. One account calls it a noiseless, wingless, tailless vessel. Orange lights shone on the port side. Green lights shone on the other. Five portholes on the left glowed an eerie orange.

It came from the east and passed to the west. As fast as any jet plane. Yet it made no noise. Then it gained altitude. Its lights switched off. It disappeared from view into the night sky. One retelling says he watched the object for about 20 minutes.

He took his report to the Bridgetown Police. According to one unverified account, it went to the Police Commissioner, with a copy to RAAF Base Pearce. The Air Force was "very, very fascinated". It sent back 16 questions for him to answer immediately. That made him, as the Dodgy Perth blog put it, "the first Western Australian to be interrogated by the authorities about flying saucers." The same unverified account says RAAF Pearce and air traffic control at Guildford, then Perth's airport, had no aircraft in the area at the time.

Dodgy Perth names him only as "Charles B." and calls him a sober sort of man, not the sort to make up a UFO for attention. Another source gives his full name as Charles Aubrey Bolton, but that name has not been checked against the original file. His answers to the RAAF are not recorded in any published source.

His report became the first entry in the Western Australian Police "UFO File". The file runs to 163 pages and covers 1951 through the 1970s, mostly reports from country areas. It was kept secret until 2007, when it was made public following a review of police records. It is now held by the State Records Office of Western Australia in the State Library building. Its Senior Archivist, Damien Hassan, has said the official correspondence mostly does not try to explain the sightings away. Officers vouched for witnesses with words like "reliable" and "teetotaller".

No source has offered a conventional answer, and no official conclusion is recorded. A bright fireball would fit a silent object crossing from east to west, but not a 20 minute watch, nor the climb and the lights going out. A jet would not have been silent at 600 metres, and the reported checks found no aircraft aloft. A lit object at an unknown range is hard to judge for height and speed, and nothing in the report fixes either. The case does not appear in Keith Basterfield's catalogue of notable Australian reports.

Chowerup opened a file that would keep filling. An orange light with portholes on the Carnarvon to Geraldton road in 1954. Twelve round silver objects and falling angel hair at Mt Hale Station in 1961. A farmhand's sketch at Kununurra in 1966. And in 1967, in the same Boyup Brook district, Alexander Spargo was driving between Kojonup and Boyup Brook when he saw a football-shaped, blue iridescent object. His car's electrics failed.