Sighting record / 1968
August 22, 1968. Dusk over the Nullarbor. A small Piper Navajo is flying home empty from Adelaide to Perth, cruising at 8,000 feet near Zanthus. Captain Walter Gardin is at the controls. He wakes his fellow pilot, Gordon W. Smith, in great excitement. Ahead and to the right sits a formation. A larger dark object in the middle. Smaller cigar shapes around it. All of them keeping pace with the plane. For ten minutes the main object split in two and rejoined. The smaller craft flew out and came back without turning. The radio filled with static. Then everything merged, and was gone in seconds.
Thursday, 22 August 1968. A Piper Navajo, registration VH-RTO, was flying home empty on a charter run from Adelaide to Perth. Only two professional pilots on board. Captain Walter Gardin, 34, was at the controls. Captain Gordon W. Smith was asleep in the cabin. Until that day, Gardin thought UFOs were "bull". The plane cruised west at 8,000 feet over the Nullarbor, near Zanthus on the Trans-Australian Railway. The sun had just set. The weather was "fine, with no haze above 6000'".