Westall School UFO Sighting

Westall was a small community in the suburb of Clayton South, about 21 km from Melbourne's CBD. Westall High School stood next to a primary school. Across the way lay The Grange. It was a patch of scrubby bushland with a stand of pine trees. The date was Wednesday, 6 April 1966. The Wednesday before Easter.

Around 10:15 am, during PE classes, something appeared over the oval. Science teacher Andrew Greenwood described a "bright, silver object" that was "hovering very closely to powerlines". Paul Smith, 16, was working at a nearby market garden. "No engines, nothing. It's just sitting above the power lines in the sky."

Then the aircraft came. First one light plane. Then four more. "Whenever an aircraft came near the UFO, it moved slowly at first then rapidly, and then stopped," Greenwood said. "This went on for 20 minutes, after which the UFO shot away." Joy Clarke, 12, watched three silver saucer-shaped craft duck and dive above the school. Tania Vassie, 13, remembers rushing down the corridor, screaming: "Flying saucer, flying saucer."

The object dropped behind the pines. Students ran after it. Terry Peck climbed the fence and saw a "saucer-shaped" craft "about one-and-a-half times the size of a large sedan". It hung just above the ground. It gave off heat. Purple lights surrounded it. "I could hear a low buzzing sound." Then: "It turned on its side and it just went straight up into the air, so fast it was almost instantaneous."

Peck saw a "swirly pattern of yellowed grass". The next day, a student named Joy Tighe filled in a report form for the Victorian Flying Saucer Research Society. It recorded "flattened waist high grass for 10 yds diameter 600 yds from school". The UFO, the form said, "turned edge & disappeared fast".

The same day, headmaster Frank Samblebe held an assembly. Pupils were told that flying saucers don't exist. "Get on with your studies and forget about it." Witnesses later described men in dark suits or unfamiliar blue uniforms who questioned students and told them to keep quiet. Greenwood recalled: "I was then told that I hadn't seen anything." No documents back any of this up. On 9 April, four Air Force investigators visited the reported landing site. They found nothing. No official conclusion has ever been issued.

The Age offered an answer the very next day. The object "might have been a weather balloon". The Weather Bureau said one had been released from Laverton at 8:30 am. An anonymous RAAF navigator suggested a nylon target drogue, towed by one plane for the others to chase. Researcher Keith Basterfield proposed HIBAL flight 292, a radiation-sampling balloon. Bill Chalker called that "an incredible force-fit". John Sutcliffe, a HIBAL electronics specialist at Mildura in 1966, doubted a HIBAL balloon was involved at all. Sceptic Richard Saunders points to memory contamination instead. "The big misconception is that we have good memories."

The number of witnesses grew over the years. Early press reports mentioned "several" students. Later ones said "over 300 children and staff". Researcher Shane Ryan has interviewed 142 people who saw the object and 197 who saw the ground marks. The documentary Westall '66: A Suburban UFO Mystery was added to Australia's national history curriculum. The Grange Reserve is now the City of Kingston's UFO Park, with a silver saucer playground. Filmmaker James Fox counts Westall among the cases that "remain confounding". Sixty years on, Tania Vassie is unshaken. "I know what I saw."