Retreat Hotel landing, Epsom (Eton Ridge)

Epsom is a small locality on the Peak Downs Highway, about 65 kilometres west of Mackay, on the road to Nebo. Its landmark is the Retreat Hotel, first licensed in 1865. In 1965 the proprietor was Mr Tilse, a justice of the peace and, by one account, a former senior pilot with TAA and Queensland Airlines.

The night of 23 May 1965. Tilse was playing cards with two men. Mr Judin was a guest. Mr Burgess drove trucks. At about five minutes past midnight they saw something to the south-east, resting near the ground some half a kilometre away.

It rose and hovered over the trees, at about seventy metres. Banks of brilliant lights shone from beneath it. The ground was lit, and so were the trees. They described a black disc, charcoal in the moonlight.

One account calls it a metallic domed saucer with three triangular legs and a bank of floodlights. Another gives it three or four legs, each with a bright light. The men could not agree on its size. Tilse said about 30 feet, Judin said 20, Burgess said 6.

For about 40 minutes it worked the distance. It approached, stopped and retreated. It approached twice more. One account says it buzzed like bees as it hovered. Burgess and Judin recalled a buzz or low pitched hissing noise as it left.

It rose rapidly to about 300 feet. Then it sped away to the east or north-east. The sky was clear. The hotel ran on a diesel generator, and its lights were not affected.

The next day Tilse walked out to the spot. NICAP says two days later. He found a circular impression, practically underneath a telephone line. The line and poles were undamaged.

Local police measured a perfect circle of flattened grass, not burned, with an untouched centre. Around it ran a belt of less flattened grass, three feet two inches wide. The total diameter was twenty six feet four inches. The tops of the trees appeared to be burned, and Constable B. Self of the Nebo police confirmed the scorching. Whether any grass was scorched is disputed between accounts.

The Mackay Police and the RAAF were said to have investigated. No official report or conclusion has surfaced. No hoax has been alleged, and no conventional explanation has been published. The record has its loose ends: size estimates that differ five-fold, disagreement over when the buzzing began, and catalogues that garble the ring's measurements. A month later, on 24 June 1965, grazier R.A. Roberts reported his own sighting at Daunia Station near Nebo.

Tilse wrote a first-hand report for Panorama, the magazine of the Brisbane group UFOPIA. The case reached Flying Saucer Review, the NICAP UFO Investigator and the APRO Bulletin. Bill Chalker listed it as case 005 among Australian physical trace cases, under the name Eton Ridge, and Keith Basterfield catalogued it too. It is often grouped with the Tully "saucer nest" of 1966, Queensland's best-known ring trace.