Sighting record / 1995
Thursday, 9 March 1995. About 1:20 pm. Senior Air Traffic Controller Graeme Opie was looking south from the control tower at Hamilton International Airport. A very bright silver object crossed his view from east to west. It glistened like sunlight off a mirror and trailed a short orange tail with sparkling edges. It was gone in about a second and a half. He was not alone. Two fishermen off Tauranga, a farming couple near Te Kawa and school children in Cambridge reported something similar. Auckland's radar centre had nothing on its screens. An astronomer suggested a fireball. Opie said it was definitely not.
In early 1995 the Bay of Plenty was already restless. On 25 February near Tauranga, a rural property owner watched two lights converge and descend towards Mayor Island, one of them "a bright reddish-orange ball with a flaring tail". On 3 March, a mother and two teenagers on the Omokoroa Peninsula saw a large "flame" rise from the sea near the island. Six days later came a sighting in broad daylight.