The Willow Grove Close Encounter: Charles Brew's Milking-Shed Sighting

Willow Grove sits in the Baw Baw foothills of Victoria, northwest of Moe, in dairy country. In February 1963 the Brew family worked a farm there. Friday 15 February dawned grey. Low cloud. Rain. Poor visibility. An east wind. No thunder, no lightning.

It was about 7:10 a.m. Charles Brew was at the milking shed. Trevor Brew, aged 20, was inside. Out of the low cloud to the east, an object came down steeply, at about a forty-five degree angle. It stopped over a tree near the shed and hovered. Accounts of the height vary, from about 30 metres to 75 or 100 feet.

Charles Brew had a clear view. A domed disc about 25 feet across and 9 to 10 feet high. The upper part seemed to stand still. It was "battleship grey" with a metallic lustre, topped by a transparent dome. From the dome rose "something which resembled a broom handle," a bright chrome aerial five or six feet long. Scoop-like protuberances ran around the rim. "The lower portion, about three feet high, was rotating in an anti-clockwise direction, and was of a bluish appearance." It turned about once a second, the underside giving off a pale blue glow.

Both of them heard it. A swishing, burbling sound. Trevor Brew heard but did not see the object, and compared the noise to a didgeridoo or bull-roarer. After about five seconds of hovering, it took off faster than a jet to the west, climbing at 45 degrees into the cloud deck. The whole event lasted 15 to 16 seconds.

The animals went wild. "They done everything bar turn somersaults," Charles Brew said of the cattle. "They certainly played up." Cows and a pony fled. Both farm dogs ran off. Charles Brew felt drawn to the object, "as though beams of magnetic current" ran between the two, and suffered a peculiar headache that lasted until evening. The following week, the herd's milk production dropped slightly. Yet the memory stayed warm. "I wish it would come again. It was beautiful. I could feel the life pulsating from it."

The RAAF sent Flight Lieutenant N. Hudson and Squadron Leader A.F. Javes, who interviewed Charles Brew and found the farmer credible. On 6 March 1963 they consulted Dr Berson and Mr Clark of the CSIRO Meteorological Physics division. The two agreed that a tornado condition could give this effect. The RAAF summaries listed the possible cause as a "tornado-like meteorological manifestation." The file is held in the National Archives of Australia.

The Victorian UFO Research Society transcribed the account and found Charles Brew credible, but doubted the tornado. In 1967 the atmospheric physicist Dr James E. McDonald of the University of Arizona interviewed Charles Brew at the farm. McDonald's conclusion: "like that of many other UFO witnesses, it is extremely difficult to explain in present-day scientific or technological terms."

The weather explanation fits the low cloud and rain. Critics point to what it leaves out. There was no thunder or lightning. The RAAF's own wind data held unresolved inconsistencies. And the witness described a hard-edged, structured machine. Bill Chalker later cited Willow Grove as a case where a tornado-like explanation was offered for a striking sighting, and the 1966 Tully "saucer nest" in Queensland drew the same answer.

Jacques Vallée listed the case in Passport to Magonia. Donald Keyhoe and Gordon Lore included it in Strange Effects from UFOs. It is classed as a close encounter of the first kind, or of the second because of the effects on Charles Brew. In 2015 Ben Hurle and Andrew Arnold of Victorian UFO Action interviewed Trevor Brew at Willow Grove. Fifteen seconds of grey metal and blue light. An RAAF file that still says tornado.