by John Pinkney
This was the 1970s – and the general supposition, rooted in the state of knowledge at the time, was that the witnesses had happened upon a ‘UFO nest’. Lewis Brice passed his mysterious photograph to Jeff Findley, an investigator in Hawker, SA, who opined, ‘I think the markings were caused by the terrific pressure of something taking off. I don’t know what it is, but it’s something with the ability to launch itself and land – and it has terrific thrust.’
Findley formulated his entirely reasonable theory in the context of the numerous airborne discs and spheres that had been seen close to Lake Eyre over the decades. Further support came from a woman who testified – three weeks after the photo was taken – that a ‘moon-shaped object’ had terrorised her and her son and daughter. Beverly Schumann of Barmera reported: ‘We were driving home along the Flinders Ranges south of the lake when a brilliant yellow light suddenly rushed toward us. It was shaped like the moon, but much bigger and brighter. I got the feeling the thing was about to land on the bitumen. I was so scared I tried to swing the car around, but halfway into the turn the engine stopped and wouldn’t start again.
‘We weren’t about to sit there, so we jumped out and ran away.’
Another driver, Anita Lindblom of Hawker, backed up the story: ‘I passed her car, which was parked at a strange angle across the road. Further along I saw Beverly and the kids, running and in obvious panic. The children were so frightened they clawed at my car door trying to get in. I also saw the light, which resembled a much bigger version of the moon.
‘I drove Beverly back to her car, which started immediately. At this point the round object was hurtling away.’
There the matter rested, unresolved. But then, in 2001, British newspapers published a remarkable photograph. It showed a gigantic configuration of more than 400 crop circles in a Wiltshire wheat field.
Investigators noted that the shot bears a startling resemblance in shape and dimensions to the pattern photographed in 1979 on Lake Eyre.
In the Adelaide Advertiser (21 August 2001) London-based journalist Paul Kendall wrote:
One crop circle is often explained away as a prank or the result of a gust of wind.
But 400 or so, perfectly aligned in a mammoth psychedelic swirl 1500 feet (457 metres) across, present a challenge to the most sceptical observer. The enormous design, which almost fills the field, is one of the biggest crop circles ever seen.
Some enthusiasts regard it as proof aliens have landed. But even if it was made by pranksters their work and mastery of geometry have to be admired. John Lundberg, artist and self-confessed circle maker, said, ‘If this formation was man-made, allowing time to get in and out of the field under cover of darkness, the construction time should be around four hours. Given there are 400 circles, some of which span 70 feet (21 metres) that would mean one of those circles would need to be created every 30 seconds. This formation pushes the envelope. And that’s a massive understatement.
No matter who – or what – its author might be, Wiltshire’s overwhelming wheat field manifestation seems, arguably, engineered to attract our attention. The same can be said for the strangely similar deep-water display on Lake Eyre. Both the Australian and the English spectacles are dramatic and decorative. Both expand our imaginations and raise our consciousness about realms beyond our understanding. Possibly, as the physicist Jacques Vallee might have argued, they were designed to do exactly that.
The ‘Wheel’ that Froze a Waterworks
Another mysterious water-related incident was described to me in 1997 by a Katherine, NT, correspondent, Allan Domachenz:
At the time I was working nightshift at the Teddington water treatment facility in Maryborough, Queensland. At 3.15 am, while I was walking past the plant’s southern window, I saw a circular wheel-like object of quite enormous size moving through the sky outside.
‘Simultaneously all the lights failed – and as I quickly discovered, all the plant’s systems went dead as well. I could hardly believe that this could happen. The circuits can usually be tested three times before the power drops off entirely.
‘I was the only person in the building – and I was very frightened. But curiosity finally won out and I plucked up the courage to go outside. I was amazed to see that everything was bathed in a brilliant white light. The whole southern side of the nearby pine plantation was lit up so dazzlingly that the outline of every tree was visible.
‘The circular object I’d spotted earlier had apparently changed. It was now a massive white light spinning above the forest. I stood staring for several minutes until it suddenly it went out. Simultaneously, in the plant behind me, all the power came on again.’
In daylight Allan checked the pine plantation for clues: ‘In the long grass I found a dark brown, scorched ring, about 15 metres in diameter. The circle lay directly beneath the powerlines.
‘I was hesitant at first to talk about these events. But gradually I began to learn that large numbers of people, in the Northern Territory particularly, have had comparable experiences.
‘One case that intrigues me concerns a man who regularly has to travel north from Alice Springs. Whenever he makes the trip his car runs out of power and stops – in exactly the same spot. Although he has never seen anything, he thinks these power-drain incidents might somehow be related to my experience at the water plant.’
* * *
The Night the Waves Stood Still
In 1977, while working as an on-air director with Melbourne’s Channel 10, Sandy Coghlan lived through an experience she could neither explain nor forget. From her home in the Victorian seaside town of Rosebud, she recalled: ‘It was late at night. My boyfriend of the time (a mature but cynical television director) was taking me home from a night out. We drove past Elwood beach carpark and were deep in conversation about something, so we decided to stop there for a while. The carpark was empty, which leads me to believe it was winter.
‘He suggested we get out and walk along the beach – but for a reason I couldn’t understand I felt terrified, as though there was someone or something out there waiting to “get me”. He managed to convince me I was being silly, and we got out and walked to the water’s edge.
‘But just as we did so, the waves stopped!
‘Everything went deathly quiet. There was not even a ripple on the water, as though Port Phillip Bay was actually a big lake. I shivered and said, “Let’s get back in the car” – but as I spoke we both turned for no apparent reason and looked into the sky.
‘It was a cloudy night and there was a bright light in one of the clouds, as though a searchlight was being directed at it, but there was no beam of light coming from below. It was more as if a searchlight was being beamed from above the cloud. While we just stood there, looking, the strangest feeling came over me. I felt as though an invisible wall had been erected around me and that I was completely safe.
‘I stopped shivering and we stood there watching the light – which didn’t move or flash, just shone through the cloud. This went on for five minutes, and then the light went out, disappeared, as though someone had flicked a switch.
‘At that precise moment the waves resumed. Not that there were any big waves, just ripples in the bay. But they started rolling in again and the silence was broken.
‘We walked back to the car and drove home without speaking. My boyfriend, being a total sceptic about all things “unusual”, later refused to acknowledge that anything had occurred. (But in 2005, when we discussed the incident again, I was surprised to hear him acknowledge its reality – describing it as a “goosebump experience”. We agreed on most details except for the time we’d spent staring at the light. To me it was five minutes; he said 15.)
‘On the morning following that episode on the sand, there was a newspaper report – only a few paragraphs well into the paper – describing a bright light seen over beachside Melbourne suburbs. Although the article didn’t interpret it that way, the places and times the story mentioned suggested to me that the
light had been moving along the coast.
‘I’ve always regretted not keeping that newspaper cutting, but my interest was renewed recently when i read that many people report a stillness and silence during a UFO sighting.* This is something I had never realised before.’
Sandy Cognlan’s profound and subtle recollection accurately evinces the sense of awe many witnesses feel in the presence of an unknown.
The ‘Crop Circle’ in a Swamp
One of Australia’s most enduring water mysteries occurred near Tully, Queensland, on 19 January 1966. At 5.50 am, George Pedley, a 28-year-old banana-grower, was driving his tractor past the property of a neighbouring canefarmer, Albert Pennisi, when he noticed a disturbance on the surface of a nearby marsh, known locally as Horseshoe Lagoon.
As George Pedley watched, a grey, non-reflective machine about eight metres long and two metres deep exploded vertically from the water with ‘an earsplitting hissing noise’. Spinning at a ‘terrific rate’, the object rose to about 18 metres before plunging back into the water, then emerging again, travelling in a blur of speed.
The witness told local police – and later the RAAF–that the object comprised ‘two saucers face to face’. There seemed to be no antennae, portholes or signs of life. But what intrigued investigators most was the apparent evidence the intruder had left behind.
When Pedley drove across to the lagoon he found, at the takeoff site, a roughly nine-metre-diameter ‘cleared area’ in the green grasslike reeds. But the water did not remain clear for long. The witness returned at noon to find that a floating mass of reeds, swirled clockwise, had come to the surface while he was absent.
Knowing he had experienced something extraordinary, Pedley took his news to Albert Pennisi. In mid-afternoon the neighbours went to the lagoon and waded out to the floating mass. Its outer perimeter seemed to have been thrust deeply down by an immense circular weight. Pennisi rushed back to his house for a camera – and spent the rest of the day taking the first photographs of the purported saucer nest that would create controversy around the world.
Within 24 hours the site had become a hub for police, RAAF investigators, Queensland University scientists, journalists and private researchers. The consensus was that an unknown rotary force of prodigious power had swirled, then sunk the reeds. Sceptics – pontificating confidently from a distance – suggested the simpler explanation that a sudden attack by reed-munching grubs had (somehow) created the circular swirling.
Mr Pen nisi, an experienced bushman, dived into the lagoon with a policeman to inspect the circle’s underside at first-hand. He surfaced, confidently stating that grubs could not have been the culprits. There was no sign of ‘stubble’ (debris the creatures characteristically left behind). The lagoon floor beneath the circle was clean, the swirled reeds undamaged. It was apparent that they had been sucked upward – by something. Physicist G. Taylor agreed – finding no evidence of infestation by parasites.
In the days that followed, a teacher, Hank Penning, and a farmer, Tom Warren, found two more nests nearby. The reeds in one of them were flattened clockwise. But in the other – just to intensify the mystery – they were swirled anti-clockwise. By 1993, 22 nests had been found on Albert Pennisi’s property.
Despite long investigation, scientists of numerous disciplines have been unable to find an explanation for the puzzle of Horseshoe Lagoon. From the beginning, one of the strangest elements of the enigma was Albert Pennisi himself. On 23 January 1966, Sydney’s Sun Herald quoted the nest’s discoverer, George Pedley, thus:
Albert believed me right away. He told me he’d been dreaming for a week that a flying saucer would land on his property.
He said that about 5.50 am on Wednesday [the time Pedley saw the flying object] his dog suddenly went mad and bounded off towards the lagoon.
* * *
Far-fetched though it may seem, the syndrome of precognitive dreams involving UFOs is well known to the world’s researchers. Engineer Paul Norman, dedicated field investigator for Victoria’s UFO Research Society, once told me, ‘Some people just seem to have foreknowledge, or say they do. I’ve interviewed a few witnesses who’ve made remarks along the lines, “Funny, I knew something unusual was going to happen today.”’
Albert Pennisi seemed to have known also. In a follow-up interview with the Sydney Sun (24 January 1966) he said:
I’d get them [the dreams] almost every night... They were beginning to worry me. It was always the same. This thing like a giant dish would come out of nowhere and land nearby. And I’d watch it in my dream and get real afraid. Then on Wednesday morning about five o’clock my dog suddenly seemed to go out of its mind. It was howling like a mad thing and raced off towards the lagoon.
The House Where Time ‘Ran Backward’
UFO researchers took the case seriously. It involved:
Three credible witnesses, none of whom sought notoriety of any kind.
A pattern of bizarre phenomena, seldom publicised but of a kind previously chronicled in Australia and elsewhere.
Drawings and details matching those in other unpublished reports.
Triangular marks on a victim’s skin.
The drama came to my attention in 1990. Andrew Wilson, a 20-year-old electronics apprentice, wrote to describe inexplicable noises and bursts of light in the Adelaide suburban house he shared with his mother Jill and sister Susan. He hoped I could suggest what might be going on.
When I rang Andrew, he said the disturbance had escalated. Two ‘people in hoods, with bony arms’ were appearing in the bungalow’s corridors and rooms. One, which he and his sister described as ‘Grey Thing’, was a three-fingered humanoid male, about 1.2 metres tall, that repeatedly bolted through the house in a blur of speed. The other, ‘The Nurse’, was a female with large black eyes which manifested at night to conduct painful procedures family members were powerless to resist.
At first the siblings had imagined they were being haunted by their dead grandfather, who was teasing them with bursts of light and sudden noises. But when the physical attacks began they realised that other forces were involved. With Andrew’s permission I passed his illustrated summary of the incidents to Colin Norris, director of South Australia’s UFO research group.
Andrew recalled: ‘It began when Sue and I were watching a late movie on TV. We heard footsteps approaching the front door and I went out to check.
Witness’s sketch of one of two entities which he said invaded his family’s Adelaide house.
‘But no one was there.
‘Five minutes later, though, we got a terrible fright when the loungeroom door opened of its own accord and the room suddenly went cold. When this happened we both started weeping, for reasons we couldn’t explain. After a minute or so, we got another scare when the door closed again. The temperature returned to normal and we dried our eyes.
‘I went into the passage, thinking I’d find out what happened. I was shocked to find it was bitterly cold again – and all the pictures on the walls were crooked. After straightening them I went back to Sue in the lounge. We were both really upset. But then came the worst part...
‘Everything began to happen again, backwards.
‘The cold returned to the loungeroom...the loungeroom door swung open... we began crying uncontrollable tears... then we heard the footsteps moving away from the front door. This back-and-forth phenomenon troubled us on numerous occasions. A friend also experienced it one night – and was so scared he refused to visit us again.
‘Up to this time – even though we’d never experienced a ghost – we assumed our dead grandfather might be haunting us. But then things happened that totally changed our minds. One afternoon, when we were both in the hall, we felt another intense surge of cold. Then a grey-hooded and caped figure flashed past us at colossal speed. Its face was invisible, but it had long bony arms. It was only in view for a few seconds, but our Australian terrier went absolutely berserk, snarling, whimpering and huddling against the wall.
After that day Susan and Mum and I saw the figure quite regularly. We called it Grey Thing and took quite a few photos of it hurtling past. But when they were developed only blank walls were visible. One afternoon Grey Thing gave Susan a painful shove while she was taking a plate from the microwave. Another time we saw it sitting on our roof with its hood pulled over its face.
‘The next house-invader to arrive was the creature I came to call The Nurse. I’d been sitting up in bed reading a book. At 3.20 am I decided to give it away for the night, and turned out the light.
‘As I slid down into the bed I began to feel afraid. I looked across the room and saw a tall grey being, a female, standing in what seemed to be a shimmering haze, staring at me. I tried to focus my eyes on her, but couldn’t. Then I heard her voice in my head, telling me quite kindly to roll over. I didn’t want to obey, but my brain felt disengaged from my body and I did what she wanted.
Sketch of the hooded intruder that hurtled through the corridors.
‘Next I felt two sharp jabs: one in my neck, at the base of my skull, and the other in my left side. Then she told me to roll on my back, saying, ‘I’m going to show you a pictures.’ I remember her exact words because of the grammatical mistake. She produced a stick of whitish-looking metal and placed its tip, which seemed to be brass or copper, on my forehead.
‘Immediately I felt as if I was on my back, looking up at a beautiful sunset. The few clouds in the sky were coloured deep crimson or orange. I stared into that sky for what seemed a few seconds. But when I sat up in bed my bookcase clock showed 6.22 am.
‘The following day I was hit by uncomfortable after-effects. My neck was so incredibly painful I had to leave work early to see a doctor. He said I’d probably strained it by sleeping at the wrong angle. But that night I noticed a small scab at the top of my neck where I’d been poked. After two more days of soreness the scab fell away.