UFORA Research Digest

History

Keith Basterfield compiled the UFORA Research Digest monthly from July 1989, publishing from PO Box 229, Prospect, South Australia 5082, under the UFO Research Australia banner. Each issue listed cases currently under investigation by member organisations across the national network, using a standardised numbering system (UFORA followed by year and sequential number: UFORA89001, UFORA89002, and so on). The deadline for inclusion in each issue was four working days before the end of the month. Basterfield's contact number was (08) 251 2773, evenings.

The Digest's format was strictly functional: case number, date of event, location, time, and a brief abstract of one to four lines, followed by the investigating organisation's abbreviation. Investigating bodies included UFORA-NSW, UFOR(QLD), UFOR(SA), K Basterfield personally, and other state-level groups. Cases ranged from simple nocturnal lights to complex close encounters with entities, possible abductions, and physical trace cases.

The Digest operated as a clearinghouse: researchers filed initial reports with Basterfield, who published the abstracts nationally, and full investigation reports were disseminated through the same channel once complete. This created a living register of Australian UFO activity that any researcher in the network could consult to identify patterns, avoid duplication of effort, or offer assistance on cases in their geographic area.

Connections

The Digest was the national clearinghouse for Australian field investigation through its three-year run, and every state-level researcher who filed into it built up the cross-organisational record the archive now holds. Every named figure, every adjacent publication, and every connecting surface has its own home here.

People in this collection

The South Australian compiler and the state-organisation principals whose case numbers ran into the Digest's monthly registers.

• Keith Basterfield, the Prospect, South Australia compiler who ran the Digest from July 1989, the discipline of the standardised UFORA case-numbering system, and the parallel abduction-case work at the AUFOASC
• Bill Chalker, the Sydney-based New South Wales researcher whose UFOR-NSW case files fed into the Digest across its run
• Mark Moravec, the NSW psychologist and ufologist whose entity-encounter research ran in the same national network
• Glennys Mackay, the Queensland state-organisation principal whose UFOR(QLD) case files filed into the Digest
• Colin Norris, the long-running South Australian researcher whose work spanned the AUFORS, GAFIA and UFO Research SA period
• Paul Norman, the Victorian Australian Flying Saucer Research Society veteran whose AFSR (VIC) case-files fed into the same national clearinghouse
• Peter Khoury, the NSW abduction-claim researcher whose case material ran in the parallel AUFOASC publication during the same period

Australian cases the network investigated

The major Australian cases that anchor the archive's Australia exhibition and that the UFORA national network worked alongside, around, and after.

• The Valentich Disappearance, the 21 October 1978 Cessna 182 disappearance off Cape Otway, the case that Bill Chalker's NSW work continued to chase through the UFORA period
• The Westall Encounter, the 6 April 1966 daylight close encounter at Westall High School in Clayton South, Victoria, an anchor case in the Australian record the national network built around
• The Cruttwell Papua exhibition, William B. Gill's 1959 Boianai sightings and the Cruttwell collection that documented them, the Australian-tradition foundation case the Digest's later cases sat in the lineage of
• The Knowles family Nullarbor incident of 20 January 1988, the unexplained vehicle event on the Eyre Highway near Mundrabilla that the Digest's first issues sat alongside chronologically

Related Australian publications

The national network's other publications: the earlier UFORAN journal the Digest succeeded, the parallel state-level newsletters, the abduction-case publication Basterfield ran alongside, and the bulletins of the Victorian and Queensland organisations the Digest received case numbers from.

• UFORAN, the earlier UFORA journal the Research Digest succeeded as the network's case-clearinghouse organ
• Australian UFO Abduction Study Centre and Newsletter of the AUFOASC, Basterfield's parallel abduction-research publications running through the same Prospect, South Australia period
• ACUFOS, the Australian Centre for UFO Studies, the South Australian academic-rigour counterpart whose Australian CUFOS Journal ran alongside
• Australian Flying Saucer Review, the Victorian publication Paul Norman edited, the longer Victorian-state run that the UFORA Digest's AFSR (VIC) cases came through
• Australian UFO Bulletin, the broader-coverage Australian publication whose case-file lineage overlapped with the UFORA network
• TUFOIC Newsletter, the Tasmanian regional publication whose Hobart-area cases formed the southern node of the same national civilian-research network

Cross-cutting themes and surfaces

• Abductions, the theme Basterfield's parallel AUFOASC work and the Digest's complex close-encounter entries (UFORA89011, UFORA89013) contributed to in the late 1980s
• Australia, the country exhibition the entire national network's record sits inside
• Timeline, the chronological record the Digest's case numbering sat alongside
• Newsletter Archive, the catalogue surface for all 246 newsletter collections