Westall 1966 flying saucer incident
no it wasn't. The year was 2011 during the time I was involved in developing software myself when I heard about it. definately in the US and definately not social media. Since then I am aware that it is not an uncommon phenomena. I suspect there has been a number of incidents which have become merged into a single event. Still a concern all the same.
Re: Andrew Greenwood, above I posted the the title of a youtube clip to a 25-minute interview he did in 1967 (the year after the event)... Worth listening to to get a sense of the authenticity of the incident...
As for Tanya... she has come forward since the documentary was made, had a lot of electroshock treatment as a child and only has very vague memories of attending Westall school, and no apparent memory of the day in question. He said that she doesn't think she was taken away by ambulance after the incident...
Re: Keith Basterfield... but my personal impression from seeing some of the things that he has put out on his blog in the past (I don't have the link right now) is that he may have a mission to find prosaic 'nothing to see here' explanations for the public on the government's behalf by cherry-picking (or being given) declassified documents that point in that direction.
As for Tanya... she has come forward since the documentary was made, had a lot of electroshock treatment as a child and only has very vague memories of attending Westall school, and no apparent memory of the day in question. He said that she doesn't think she was taken away by ambulance after the incident...
Re: Keith Basterfield... but my personal impression from seeing some of the things that he has put out on his blog in the past (I don't have the link right now) is that he may have a mission to find prosaic 'nothing to see here' explanations for the public on the government's behalf by cherry-picking (or being given) declassified documents that point in that direction.
Back to Westall: You will see in a later reply that I also listened to the Greenwood interview, which raised a few more questions. Sure, Andrew seemed authentic enough. But what was seen was hardly obvious to the eye by the way he described it.
Sad about Tanya. If she has no memory of the day in question then naturally she also wouldn't remember an ambulance attending to her that day! Electroshock treatment was likely more common back in the 60's, which is shocking in itself. But I think you would agree it seems a stretch to link any of that to this incident?
In a reply to 'Justin Heywood' I noticed you wrote "witnessed by hundreds of people and it was anomalous". But is that really the case? Andrew Greenwood said in his interview that about half the school was outside / on the oval and that may have been around 300 of the 500-600 students at the school. But it was recess by that stage so you would expect most kids to be outside. That doesn't mean they were all looking at or indeed seeing the object(s) that Andrew finally himself spotted. So how many did actually see something? Seeking out and interviewing students now is going to stretch their memories. As a kid and with my siblings, we spotted something unusual in the sky one night and my lasting memory was that we thought it was a UFO. But thinking back now, I don't know where we saw it, what age I was, or even what made us think it was unusual or a UFO. Could have been a meteorite or a satellite passing over.
Thought I would add an illustration of roughly how Andrew Greenwood described the object, being cigar shaped in profile, with aspect ratio about like middle finger, and about 2/3rds the length of a Cessna sized aircraft (through not sure how he judged the distance of the object away from him, and hence its relative size).
I don't understand why it is so difficult to accept that there probably was a highly advanced non human species inhabiting the planet prior to the last extinction event. Like us there probably were survivors. Most of us on this planet believe there is a higher authority and that someday will be revealed to us. For some reason we just can't bring those two things together.
There is no "h" in Westall. But, there was a UFO in Westall in 1966 (as many as three according to many witnesses), and while I don't know what it was that was seen by so many that day, I doubt it was a Nomad aircraft which, from memory, requires runways to take off and land. The objects seen at Westall, in the air and on or near the ground, also lacked any visible wings, tail, propellors, engines, wheels, markings etc. Were the Government Aircraft Factories really making craft like that in the 1960s?
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Of course there are loose ends, that's why, in part, it's still a mystery!
Specifically though, re your noted loose ends: 1. Andrew Greenwood spoke about what he saw when interviewed at the time by the local newspaper "The Dandenong Journal", and a year later when interviewed by University of Arizona atmospheric physicist Professor James McDonald. He is retired, is not a recluse, but does mostly shun publicity. 2. Tanya had not made herself available to be included in the 2010 documentary "Westall '66: A Suburban UFO Mystery" at the time it was made; in recent years she has made herself more available. While she has no memory of being taken to hospital at the time of the incident, she is open to the possibility that it may have happened, given others remember it happening. Her memories of the incident have been posted on the Westall Flying Saucer Incident Facebook page. 3. Barbara Robins was interviewed for the 2010 documentary but her health and her memory were both very poor unfortunately. She recalled being on staff at the school and had some memory of a UFO incident while there, but no details, including of taking photos and a camera being confiscated. 4. Extensive searches for police records pertaining to this incident have not been fruitful, although two police officers (now deceased) have been identified as being part of the response to the incident that day, and certainly many witnesses recall the police presence. 5. Several teachers from both schools - the incident did not involve just one school, but two adjacent schools - have been interviewed, and three featured/appeared in the 2010 documentary. Two other teachers - one at the high school and one at the primary school - who apparently were witnesses too, had unfortunately passed away before they were identified. 6. There was a report that an empty film canister had been found at some point in the Channel Nine archive in Richmond that belonged to the news bulletin which included the Westall story from the night of the incident, but it had since gone missing, and the film had also gone missing, and remains so. A scene was re-enacted in the 2010 documentary to illustrate that aspect of the story. Extensive efforts to find that film (or the canister even!) have not been successful. Keith Basterfield is a well-respected, long-standing, meticulous UFO researcher, and he featured in the documentary.
Specifically though, re your noted loose ends: 1. Andrew Greenwood spoke about what he saw when interviewed at the time by the local newspaper "The Dandenong Journal", and a year later when interviewed by University of Arizona atmospheric physicist Professor James McDonald. He is retired, is not a recluse, but does mostly shun publicity. 2. Tanya had not made herself available to be included in the 2010 documentary "Westall '66: A Suburban UFO Mystery" at the time it was made; in recent years she has made herself more available. While she has no memory of being taken to hospital at the time of the incident, she is open to the possibility that it may have happened, given others remember it happening. Her memories of the incident have been posted on the Westall Flying Saucer Incident Facebook page. 3. Barbara Robins was interviewed for the 2010 documentary but her health and her memory were both very poor unfortunately. She recalled being on staff at the school and had some memory of a UFO incident while there, but no details, including of taking photos and a camera being confiscated. 4. Extensive searches for police records pertaining to this incident have not been fruitful, although two police officers (now deceased) have been identified as being part of the response to the incident that day, and certainly many witnesses recall the police presence. 5. Several teachers from both schools - the incident did not involve just one school, but two adjacent schools - have been interviewed, and three featured/appeared in the 2010 documentary. Two other teachers - one at the high school and one at the primary school - who apparently were witnesses too, had unfortunately passed away before they were identified. 6. There was a report that an empty film canister had been found at some point in the Channel Nine archive in Richmond that belonged to the news bulletin which included the Westall story from the night of the incident, but it had since gone missing, and the film had also gone missing, and remains so. A scene was re-enacted in the 2010 documentary to illustrate that aspect of the story. Extensive efforts to find that film (or the canister even!) have not been successful. Keith Basterfield is a well-respected, long-standing, meticulous UFO researcher, and he featured in the documentary.
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Andrew Greenwood has no memory of photos being taken at the time by a teacher. However, there are witnesses who have clear memories of this happening. So, there is an inconsistency there that has not been resolved. Memories are imperfect as we all know.
There was some discussion amongst the teachers about the incident, according to teachers I have spoken to, but it seems that generally such discussion was frowned upon by the headmaster. One senior teacher recalled taking older witnesses to the headmaster's office, one by one, to have them draw what they had seen, and to tell him what they had seen. After seeing the similarities in the drawings and in the accounts, both the teacher and the headmaster had come to a conclusion that the students were telling the truth and had clearly seen something unusual. It is not known what happened to those drawings.
There was some discussion amongst the teachers about the incident, according to teachers I have spoken to, but it seems that generally such discussion was frowned upon by the headmaster. One senior teacher recalled taking older witnesses to the headmaster's office, one by one, to have them draw what they had seen, and to tell him what they had seen. After seeing the similarities in the drawings and in the accounts, both the teacher and the headmaster had come to a conclusion that the students were telling the truth and had clearly seen something unusual. It is not known what happened to those drawings.
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