The November 1974 issue opened with organisational news. The Victorian U.F.O. Research Society had acquired meeting premises on the twelfth floor of 100 Collins Street in central Melbourne, open to members on the second and fourth Friday evenings of every month from seven-thirty. The library now held over four hundred titles. Borrowing fees were raised: twenty-five cents for paperbacks, fifty cents for the more expensive recent hardbacks. Annual elections were called for President, Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer, and three committee members. Nominations had to reach the Secretary by Friday 29 November.
The lead news item was an update on the Pascagoula case. Astronaut James McDivitt, who had photographed a UFO from Gemini 4 and reported two other UFO sightings while in space, had contacted Charles Hickson, one of the Mississippi fishermen who reported being taken aboard a craft in October 1973. McDivitt had been interviewed on NBC’s “Today” programme on 12 April 1974. He stated that he believed the two fishermen had reported a real experience.
Under the heading Odd Items of Interest, the bulletin reprinted a passage from a 17 July 1974 article in the Orange Daily attributed to Mrs Jim Lorenzen of APRO. Lorenzen described what she said were Defense Department fears that extraterrestrial beings might stage a dramatic “over act” at any time to prove their existence, prompting the Department to review the historic stand that UFOs existed only in the minds of eccentrics. The next item went further still. Under the heading UFO Cover-Up “Dwarfs Watergate”, nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman was reported, from the Melbourne Herald of 24 June 1974, as saying: “There is a galactic federation of creatures who are communicating and they look at us and say: ‘A nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there’. They visit here often to grab plant and soil samples, and maybe take humans for breeding stock or specimens.” The government, Friedman said, was pulling a cover-up that “dwarfs Watergate”. The bulletin’s brief Still Unidentified! note added: “Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the scientist who has investigated more UFO reports than any other scientist, says that one fifth of all reported sightings are still unidentified.”
The longest international piece in the issue was a radar case from the Pacific. The Warrnambool Standard of 31 July 1974 reported that Major Dallas van Hoose, a spokesman at the US Army’s Huntsville, Alabama missile base, had confirmed “some unexplained aerial phenomena” observed during a tracking exercise. Scientists, many reluctant to be named because of public scepticism, said they had been unable to explain the “ghost ships”. The previous August, the USAF had launched a Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile from Vandenberg AFB toward the Kwajalein missile range in the Marshall Islands. As the nose cone separated and entered the atmosphere at roughly six thousand metres per second, radar scanners at Kwajalein and Meck islands were tracking it routinely. At about twenty thousand metres altitude the radar experts found they were also tracking an unidentified flying object next to the warhead. The phantom was described as three metres high and twelve metres long, an inverted saucer-shape. Two separate radar systems saw it simultaneously, which may eliminate the probability of a malfunction. Three other identical objects were seen in the vicinity. One scientist told the paper that the phantom ship “flew under its own power” but could not explain what power was involved.
The Australian content began on page three. On Friday 7 September 1974, Mr and Mrs Herb Slater of New Norfolk, Tasmania, and their son John, were driving near Antill Ponds when John saw a number of lights in the sky. The family stopped the car and got out to watch. The object came down through cloud. It appeared cigar-shaped, with a green light at one end, a white one at the other, and red lights on either side of the body. It hovered, then moved slowly up and down for about six minutes. The lights were so bright they illuminated the cloud layer. The family heard “a slight hum, or a whirring noise” just before the object moved off toward Oatlands.
The Society had a detailed investigation of a Victorian case. Robert Nagle, a young married man from Noble Park, told VUFORS he was a keen duck shooter, often going on night shoots by moonlight. On Saturday 23 March 1974 he had been shooting at Lake Wellington in the early part of the night. Around midnight he drove to another spot near Lake Colman, about twenty-five miles from Sale, arriving about one in the morning. The moon was nearly full and a few clouds were about as he sat on the bonnet of his car watching the scene. He glimpsed out of the corner of his eye an illuminated object descending from a cloud, moving from the north towards him. It became stationary at an estimated half-mile distance and about one hundred feet altitude. Nagle moved to watch from behind the boot of his car. When the object began to advance slowly towards him, he retreated on foot into the paddock. The object stopped after about two seconds. Nagle returned to the car, entered by a rear door, retrieved his keys, unlocked the boot, retrieved his loaded shotgun, and slid into the back seat. He watched the object for about ten minutes. A beam emerged from ground level almost at ninety degrees and curved into the lower stage of the object at its side, of a constant thickness of about ten feet. The object itself he thought was fifty to one hundred feet wide. As the beam was visible, the object appeared “unstable”, or rocking slightly. When the beam disappeared, it did so by vanishing progressively from the bottom upwards, becoming shorter and shorter until its end receded into the object. Nagle was unsure whether the object was over land or water; his vision was obstructed at the lake’s edge. Fear got the better of him eventually. He jumped into the driver’s seat and, with lights out, drove away across the paddocks toward Golden Beach. He did not look back.
A New South Wales case carried a separate authority. The Cowra Guardian of 23 July 1974 reported that Senior Constable Long of the local police had sketched an unidentified object he watched at Mogriguy, near Dubbo. Long said it “looked like one of those sputniks”. The sketch was passed to VUFORS for inclusion in its files.
At Adaminaby on Saturday 29 June 1974, around ten in the morning, young Paul Mueller of “Ashvale” saw a white object in the middle of the clouds and called his family. The Muellers described it as round, white, and about the size of a soup-plate, high in the sky, with several lights flashing like torches. Pamela Mueller, Paul’s sister, saw orange and yellow flashing; Paul saw red, green, orange and yellow. Mrs Mueller estimated the object was about two miles from the house. The whole family said they experienced a giddy sensation while the object was stationary, and felt tight in the stomach “as if a belt was being tightened about them”. Pamela said the family was frightened. Mrs Mueller added that the sky seemed darker when the object was visible. After about five minutes the object moved slowly off toward Adaminaby.
Camden produced the issue’s most vivid sighting. Three teenage girls became hysterical when an unidentified flying object “as big as a house” hovered about thirty feet above them near Camden at the weekend. Sydney Airport tracked the object on radar from Camden toward Sydney before it headed north and disappeared. Sheryl Connolly, fifteen, described the object’s “attack” on Gabrielle Martin, fourteen, of Cartwright, and Roslyn Grimes, sixteen, of Mortdale, in a paddock on Deepfield Road, Catherine Field, seven miles north of Camden. “It came over the trees in the south, making a kind of humming noise with a whistle. We were tending our horses at the bottom of the paddock, but we ran like mad when it stopped above us.” The object, Connolly said, was steel-coloured and about the size of a house, with whirling white lights underneath. “Suddenly it dropped, and Roslyn and Gabrielle, who were directly beneath it, started screaming. Roslyn tripped over, and the thing stopped only a few feet above her before rising again.” The object covered the ground with a fifty-foot circle of shimmering light as it swept over the paddock, across Deepwater Road, and high above a chicken farm. Constable J. Walshe of Camden police had investigated. “You only had to look at them to see they had not made it up. They were in a state of shock. I interviewed neighbours who said they also heard the noise. I have no reason to disbelieve their story.” Squadron Leader J. Hickey of RAAF Penrith Operational Command was expected to file a follow-up report. The Sydney Airport tracking confirmed that a large balloon had been tracked from the airport when it disappeared from the radar screen about 8:05 pm on Friday, lost height over Camden, then rose again soon afterwards.
A Wellington vehicle-interference case followed. Driving home on Monday night, Mrs Janine Robertson, twenty-one, of Wellington, NSW, had been about ten miles from town when an object near the road began to follow her car. Her engine cut and the car coasted to a stop. The light moved overhead and remained for some minutes before departing. The car restarted and Mrs Robertson drove on. Later in the night the gear box of the car collapsed. Flight Lieutenant I. Thomas of RAAF Dubbo was conducting the official inquiry. The Wellington Times of 31 July 1974 had broken the story.
The Tasmanian section drew on multiple reports. The Hobart Mercury of 30 September 1974 ran a story under the heading “Her Aim Is To Contact A UFO”. Mrs Ursula Curran, a Legana housewife, told the paper she and her husband Jeff had watched a UFO at close range for more than two minutes in the Launceston suburb of Riverside, early on the morning of the previous day. Mrs Curran had picked her husband up from work at Launceston about two in the morning. The object hovered over a power station at Riverside and then gradually moved toward her car. She stopped the car as it approached. When it was directly above her she noticed it was triangular shaped with rounded edges, with two white lights underneath, and “two retractable skids about two metres long running just behind the two white underside lights. They were hard up under the body and could have been a type of landing platform.” It emitted a powerful pulsating noise as it disappeared south toward West Launceston. Mrs Curran told the paper she had made several earlier sightings in New Zealand. “My big yen would be to make contact with one of those things. I’m not afraid of them.” Triangular-craft reports with rounded edges and underside lights were unusual for 1974, predating the wave of triangular reports from the 1980s and 1990s.
The east coast of Tasmania produced its own cluster. TUFOIC’s sighting officer Mr Bennetto investigated a report of an object about a quarter of a mile offshore moving slowly toward Falmouth, originally interpreted by witnesses as a heavenly body until Bennetto’s calculations showed it could not have been Jupiter. The Saturday Evening Mercury of 31 August 1974 carried a substantial context piece: TUFOIC had twenty unexplained sightings for 1974 so far. A spate of cases near Gladstone had included police witnesses. Hunters had told TUFOIC of being trailed by low-flying objects, and other witnesses described frightening experiences when well-lit objects paced their cars. In one instance a man had driven through a closed farm gate to escape an object. In another a police sergeant who had picked up a UFO as an escort about four one day almost drove off the road in surprise.
Three substantial Victorian and Queensland cases ran on page six. From the Ballarat Courier of 3 June 1974, three independent sources contacted the paper on the night of 2 June to report a cigar-shaped object with flashing green lights travelling slowly at low altitude over Mt Warrenheip. The flashing lights became static and the object slowly descended until it appeared to land on the summit of the mountain. It stayed there for some minutes, slowly rose into the air, and then travelled off at “tremendous speed”. A Courier reporter was on top of the mountain within an hour of the reported sightings. He could find no tracks or signs of disturbance.
From the Warwick Daily News of 1 August 1974, a circular depression two metres in diameter and thirty centimetres deep was discovered by Mr George Nauschutz in a cultivated paddock on his grain farm at Jandowae, one hundred and fifty kilometres west of Toowoomba. Five circular holes from fifteen to ten centimetres in diameter plunged into the ground from the base of the depression. Constable N. W. Beikoff of Jandowae had examined the depression and the holes. The interiors carried a grey stain not comparable with soil in the district. Samples had been taken. A soil conservationist could offer no explanation. The holes were almost perfectly circular, and changed direction under the ground. Mrs Nauschutz noted that the ground had been ploughed recently. “The holes in the ground were as neat as if they had been bored, but there was no dirt in sight from drilling.” Constable Beikoff: “There may be a simple explanation or perhaps it may never be explained.”
From the Bowen Independent of 13 June 1974, a Queensland fisherman named Doug Nicolson described, in the form of a letter to his mother, an object he had watched on a night run between Cape Upstart and Cape Bowling Green: “Beautiful thing, came right over me then turned off. When first sighted it was coming straight towards me from dead ahead, beautifully lit all the time, but with a flashing blue and white light like a camera flash bulb only much larger. When it was overhead this flash lit my boat up so I could see everything on deck and even the planking on the side and after decks. Not only that, but it lit the water up with its flashes so that I could see the waves and ripples over a large area. I jumped out of the top hatch and made gestures to try and beckon it down low, but got no response. It then turned and flew towards Upstart Bay. I timed it, and had it for ten minutes. It was no aeroplane because it was flying too low, and for one thing it carried no navigation lights as aircraft do; too brilliantly lit for another and such bright flashing lights as I’ve only seen with flash cameras. Anyway, the whole thing was too beautiful to be an aircraft; it did not affect my compass as some people claim.”
The international closing items pulled in two more threads. From France, Defence Minister Robert Galley had stated on a 21 February 1974 radio programme entitled Pas de Panique (No Panic) that “because we do not understand the UFO phenomenon, this gives us no reason for denying its reality”. The Melbourne Herald of 8 September 1974 reported on Lorraine White, a member of the art department at Melbourne’s Emily McPherson College, who had visited Peru and Ecuador in March 1974 to check Erich von Däniken’s claims in Gold of the Gods. White had attended von Däniken’s Melbourne lectures and gained an introduction to Juan Moricz, the Argentinian ethnologist von Däniken claimed had taken him through a vast cave system. Moricz “talked to me privately for two or three hours and said that von Däniken had never entered those caves. But Moricz claims that the metal library does exist.” White then flew over the Nazca lines for what she called the best forty dollars of her life. “The thing that shocked me somehow was to see the drawings of three astronauts on the mountainside, the helmets, the sunrays, somehow I couldn’t get that out of my mind.”
A humour filler ran on page four under the heading What’s Up?: “Hey, UFO up there. There’s a group of flying saucer spotters in England, we’re told, going by the name of the Wessex Association for the Study of Unexplained Phenomena. They call themselves WATSUP for short.”
The issue carried no illustrations. Every page was typewritten in a single column, separated by rows of dotted bullet points. The article catalogue ran to twenty-two items across six pages, with the Australian content concentrated in the second half. Sixteen of the twenty-two were domestic sightings or investigations. The cluster represented one of the heaviest Australian waves the bulletin had documented.
