Phenom Westall '66 - A Suburban UFO Mystery | HS Documentary.

0:10 Soon after my son was born, I began to reflect on a story I'd heard many years before. [music] It was a story about the power adults hold over children. The stories [music] we tell them and the stories like this one that they are never meant to hear. The 6th of April, 1966 [music] started just like any other day in the city of Melbourne. Then, something very strange appeared [music] in the sky above the suburb of Westall. It hasn't been explained to this day. This boy came running in saying, "Mr. Greenwood, Mr. Greenwood, there's these things in the sky, there's these things in the sky." We looked up and we just saw this saucer-type thing taking off. It wasn't a plane, it wasn't a balloon, it was nothing like that. A lot of the kids took [music] off

1:10 towards where it seemed to go. All the students were just running all over the place, uh hysterical. Westall High School as a as a teaching situation ceased. [music] My girlfriend and I sat on the fence, climbed the fence, the school boundary, and we were crying thinking it was the end of the world. This is a mystery story that has as its setting a school, and most of the players were school children. They had this extraordinary experience, which they then tried to share with others and a lot of them had a lot of trouble doing that. They were disbelieved, almost stigmatized. I think like a lot of other people, I just shut up about it because of the And it was everybody.

2:10 You know, you were a kid, you were making it up. So, you just be quiet and in your mind [music] you just think, I know what I saw and no one's ever going to shake me from that. I know what I saw. I really felt for them as people had this incredible experience and yet they haven't been able to make sense of it. This is the biggest mass UFO sighting in Yet, it seems to have been suppressed. Deliberately kept out of the public Like the witnesses, I want to find out Whatever material was created [music] about this story has simply been buried. And yet, [music] this memory has survived. And it only has to be slightly and it's like the floodgates [music]

3:10 and all the memories come rushing out. I was precipitating various chemicals in order to make crystals and I just happened to be looking out the window thinking how to fudge my science report. What I saw or directly south was something that I'd never seen before. We were out playing sport on the oval. One of the kids yelled out, "Look, look up in the sky, you know, it's flying saucers." And And I remember we all looked up and it really was a flying saucer. I mean, from what you imagine a flying saucer, [music] it was a round silver disc. Um and it it seemed to be very low over the school and I remember kids screaming and running inside. This student came in was hysterical, leaned up against sliding screaming there's a flying saucer in the And of course everybody started to [music] head towards the door and the teacher said, "Sit down. It's not recess yet." [music] And a few minutes later the bell went

4:14 Everyone started moving like a whole lot of zebras being terrified by crocodiles. I went through the herd with them. Barbara Robbins was the chemistry teacher at the time. She just grabbed a camera and started I went into the staff room. Because I knew I wouldn't have a chance [music] to have a cup of tea any other time, I went to get a cup of tea. And then because I was a smoker and this this is something that has stayed with me for 42 years. Yes. I lit up a cigarette and so I don't know how much I delayed it before I went outside.

5:18 just took off uh out to the oval. Uh in time to see it lifting off from the oval. It was probably I don't know, 50 ft or more in the air at that stage. I see Andrew Greenwood, the science teacher, coming towards me and he said, "Did you see it? Did you see it?" And he points up in the air and I said, "No, see what?" I have a very very clear picture of him and I remember almost exactly uh what he said. [music] And he said, "It was up in the sky. It moved in incredible speeds. It It It It It seemed to go away and there seemed to be light like planes. And he thought such as [music] from He thought they were actually checking it out from the urban airport. Yes. And they were circling around it. Sort of stopped Um and [music] stopped dead in the air. And then it just sort of started descending straight down. And I sort of got down about a half way up that gum tree or above the goal post sat there for a while and then it just

6:19 sort of lifted straight up and then just took straight off. This thing went down behind the trees then it came up. It was like it had become aware of these planes coming in and it just went woof and just left [music] them like they were standing still. And then it went across to an area called The Grange which was a bit of a pine plantation behind the school. Cuz I walk around with the Westall story inside my and as soon as I enter the landscape of Westall out it comes like a three-dimensional children's storybook it pops up out of the soil. It's like I've entered my favorite children's story. The Grange was a special place for Westall students. It's where they went on cross country But it's also where childhood games and hunting for lizards gave way to illicit smoking and steamy liaisons.

7:32 Going the wrong way now. Let's be back here. Come back here. This flying saucer [music] thing came out of the blue like a bolt. It's intertwined with romping around down at the Grange, out of sight of the school authorities or their parents. It has that [music] sense of being involved with something dangerous or clandestine, and they were part of A lot of the kids took off towards where it seemed to go, and it disappeared down be- behind the trees. So, we all got through this fence and ran towards where it had appeared to land. Tanya and I and this this [music] other girl, we were over the fence. Tanya was in the lead. And we ran towards where it was coming down. I lost sight of Tanya. She was in front

8:33 of me. of girls got there faster than me. I'm I was a bit slow. And they actually passed out. And apparently it did land because when we got [music] there, there was a great big round patch of like flattened yellow almost burnt, although I'm a bit sketchy on that. I can't remember if it was really burnt or whether it was just flattened, but [music] it was sort of yellow and the grass was all flattened in a swirly sort of a pattern. Before I got there, um the disc came back up So, I stopped chasing it. We looked up and we just saw this saucer type thing taking off, and it seemed to [music] turn side on and just disappear into thin air. And what about your friend, Tanya? I believe she did see it on the ground. [music] She did see it on the ground? So, I was given to believe. Yes. Um but I went back to school and Tanya went back to school [music] and basically had gone all to pieces. There was definitely an ambulance on the

9:33 oval, and I I [music] told that she'd been taken away in the ambulance. and that was the last time I ever saw her. She was just gone, and she never came back to school. Tanya wasn't the only person who saw the craft on the ground. Before they headed over to the Grange, Victor Akusney says two objects landed in a grassy paddock where a street is All the kids were hanging on the fences. Quite a few kids there. It's a high fence, and I got up got up to the top there, and all you could see is two discs, one there and one a bit further away, probably 3 m apart. I could hear somebody in the background saying, "Stay away. Don't jump the fence." And so I thought, "Oh, well, I'm going I'm going over the fence." The craft probably would have been about there. And there was another one set back a bit on an angle. Uh probably just about there. There's a few kids walking around there.

10:34 And I was the only one on this side. I got up to it to want to touch it, and it was well, you could feel heat about a meter away coming from it. It was pretty warm or hot, and within a few minute or so, it just both of them just lifted up at the same time about this height. And um I seen what Oh, that was breathtaking watching that, and then it just gradually lifted lifted up and then went off towards the pines. I did a rough sketch of it. Wow. Look at that. This is the view from underneath, looks That's underneath. There's no seams, no joins. It's just smooth metal. Normally an aircraft has uh sheet metal, pop rivets, all that sort of stuff there. This looked like it come out of a mold or something like that, all one smooth piece of metal. Uh it was just incredible. It's just something like you see in the movies. But this is more than just cinema. If we look at the possibilities for this story, [music] they are extraordinary. We're talking about the possibility of

11:34 life [music] coming from another place and just appearing one day in their and then leaving again and leaving everybody with so many questions, but with a new openness to the beyond. If I'd been at Westall on that day, I would like to have raced after that flying saucer and uh gotten so close to it to have held it in my hands. But the adults at Westall High School saw it differently. That afternoon, our principal called a a special um assembly and told us all not to talk about it. All I know is the whole school was told off. The headmaster says, "All you kids are nuts. It's a weather balloon. Uh don't talk about it." I was prepped uh to tell the students that what they'd seen didn't exist. We weren't allowed to leave the school, at least I wasn't. My job was to walk up

12:37 and down the corridors and make sure that all students were in their rooms. I was walking back from the west end. There was confrontation between Mr. Samblebe, Barbara Robins, and a man I'd never seen before. I thought it was a police uniform, but it was just dark blue. It was demanded that she hand over not the film, [snorts] but the entire my camera. I was near the gate and the police had arrived. There were journalists outside. The police had been called in to keep the journalists away. We were told that we weren't allowed to speak to the In school grounds. After school finished, there was a TV crew outside school grounds, so we undertook an interview with them. Now, I can't remember whether it was a or um school representative that came out and ordered us to go home and the film crew to leave. And I'd actually

13:37 been giving an interview to Channel 9, and the policeman actually walked up to them and said, "Stop filming and you go back into the school ground." Okay, so that's what I did. I was 12 and 1/2 years old. Because I was a mischievous sort of person, I was always getting into trouble. I had detention for actually appearing on the show, and then I got detention again at a later date after my my um picture and story was in the Dandenong Journal. So, it didn't go unpunished, but it was worth it. I now had two new leads to follow, Channel 9 and the Dandenong Journal. I rang Channel 9 first. They searched for a flying saucer [music] story, and there it was. Now, all I have to do is find the can with the matching number.

14:56 But oddly, there was nothing there. I was absolutely devastated, and nobody had any idea where it had gone. It's very frustrating, but the good news is the Dandenong Journal does still exist, and I'm told it's here in the It's the only written account I've heard of from the period, so it's really Something obviously happened. Some people apparently didn't want the kids talking about it, and that raises all sorts of questions. Why couldn't it have been discussed? Why couldn't it been talked about openly?

15:57 And why couldn't anybody find any more information about what it was? The headmaster, for example, B, is a key part of the story. He's passed away, but I hope his children, Max and Gail, can shed some light on his behavior. Hello. Shane here, anybody home? Hello. How are you? I'm good. How are you? Max? Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Thank you very much. Thank you. He played 50 games for the Hawthorn Football Club. He was a halfback flanker, and in those days halfback flankers ran in straight lines. And that's what he did. He was pretty black and white. And and he had a very strong sense of right and wrong, and yeah, if if it didn't fit in with what he believed, yeah, he found it quite difficult. And this thing would have been seen as something that was disrupting the smooth

16:59 operation of the school. And he would have been a skeptic as I mean, he didn't believe in supernatural things. He He believed in the real life, didn't he? You know, when we were kids, there was a picture on the wall of a Roman soldier standing holding his spear and the lava was all falling down from Pompeii and people in the background were all crouching and running and dad said, "See, he's standing there doing his duty." And you know, that I mean as children that's we had to learn that discipline was important, respect, all those things, all the old values and yeah, he found it really hard as things changed to he was pretty judgemental. There was plenty for Fred Sandow to be judgemental about. In the 1960s, rebellion at home and on

18:01 the streets brought many young people into conflict with the establishment. Schools were run like the military and teachers demanded respect and obedience. Westall High was no exception. I tried to [music] contact some of the but many have passed away. As far as I know, only the science teacher, Andrew Greenwood, saw the [music] object in the air. Although he's spoken with me privately he refuses to go on the public record. Several teachers dismissed [music] the whole thing as mass hysteria. The response left students feeling confused and conflicted. Some are still searching for answers. I want to find some sort of proof that this happened so we don't keep on, you know, getting called silly people and

19:02 And I no one's ever wanted to know the details before. They just think I'm stupid [music] and And they don't want to know story. They just I said I've seen UFOs or flying saucers and they say, "Yeah, sure. What drugs were you on that day?" And um you know, I was 13 years old. I was at school in the daytime. I wasn't on any drugs. Slowly you start to drift. I'd like you to visualize the area that we've discussed [music] You're in the classroom. You're with Mr. Greenwood, who was the teacher There's a little fellow comes running around and says, "There flying saucers outside. Flying saucers outside." Everybody laughed

20:03 and Mr. Greenwood [music] said, "Come on, then. Let's have a look." See yourself running down the aisle. We're all affected by our experiences that aren't ever properly acknowledged or accepted. As a boy, [music] I was living in a fairly unhappy home. My own father had died, [music] so my mother had remarried and had given me a stepfather that I'd never asked for. I was quite and no one really seemed to understand what I was experiencing as a child. I never really had anyone talk to me about Just having it acknowledged [music] that what I was going through was real, that would have been a start. 1 2 3

21:04 Even though I know it's the more I try to see it again [music] it it the harder it becomes I think. I can see bodies but I can't see people. Faces you know. Mhm. But I can still see the trees and the Yeah and the [music] things yeah. It was The feelings don't go away they just get buried and they sort of fester a little I saw the classroom [music] for the first time and then I saw heads bobbing walking across [music] the the oval towards the end of the school ground and then there they were. Still not 100% clear but I know what they are they're they're UFOs.

22:05 If they were UFOs there should be people around the area who can corroborate what the students saw. A headmaster might be able to shut down a high school but surely not a whole Within days of delivering my flyers I'm contacted by a new witness Paul Smith. He used to work on a property next door to the Grange. We were loading up for market and as we were pulling the carrots up [music] I looked up and I was facing the object in the sky and um I just thought oh somebody's got some way of projecting a film of something into the sky. I didn't believe that it was really happening. But um my boss turned around and he saw and we stood there looking at it for several minutes. A few moments later the children came over from the high school and they noticed us, they saw us

23:06 and they sort of took a while to make up their mind whether they would come onto the property realizing it's private property. Yes. And they um decided they'd come in anyway and they did, they ran straight over straight over the market garden and they crossed and walked down here to this corner. After a while um trucks turned up with um it looked like army trucks. Right. And um there would have been about 20 guys got out. About how long after Um the object had vanished in the trees? Oh, I think it was only 20 minutes which is not a long time. But how did you know they were from the army? Uh well, they were khaki colored trucks, the um covered in patches, you know, sort of that they uh to hide, you know, what Like camouflage? Camouflage truck, yeah. And it was uh the long ones that carried quite a few people. And a couple of jeeps. So a couple of trucks? A couple of jeeps? And about 20 men in in uniforms?

24:09 Yeah. And the uniforms were what sort of uniform? Uh just khaki colored uniform. Just khaki? [music] Yeah. No other Don't remember any other sort of Not that I can remember. colors or No. I went looking for a military expert. If the army was able to turn up in just 20 minutes, where could they possibly have come from? It's quite evident that there was no deployable troops available in Melbourne at the time. Um the main units were all logistic, the supply battalions and so forth at places like Broadmeadows. There were lots of uh citizen military forces, uh today's equivalent of the army reserve, part-time units, but they couldn't have responded uh so rapidly uh and nor could they have responded in such a large number. I've come to the conclusion that the first people to respond to the incident at Westall would have been civilians of some sort, quasi civilians, uh probably working for uh and probably wearing the sort of work dress that civilians working for say the Department of Supply, say the research

25:10 and development uh establishments of the period, the sort of work dress that those personnel wore. I discovered that other people in uniform were seen in the area on the day of the sighting. Les Munday went to the Grange with his younger sister. But they saw what seemed to be a different unit. We hid behind this tree, and but fortunately this tree, the branches came down to the ground. Here we are, crouched down on our knees, and we can only look every so often as this tractor came out. He [music] was on guard duty. This was a farmer who has decided to help out. We observed two army trucks, two men in the camouflage, and two men in blue We better cover this area. And it appeared that a soldier was using a mine detector. He's walking around sweeping back and forth. Keep down. They'll see you. The next time I see them, they turned and

26:11 they started kicking violently at the The two officers decide then time to come back. They come back to the truck, and they were gone. And then we could enter the paddock. Les, Les. We had no idea what we were walking into. We didn't know what those army men were doing, and I all I can say it was just What is this? To have the army there and all the rest of it, it was something important. They certainly were not Australian, cuz Australians were not [music] using camouflage uniforms in those days in the in the mid-60s. Uh nor would they have been British. But the description of the uniforms certainly matches those worn by the United States Air Force, um, in the mid-1960s. There were American military and intelligence personnel in Australia in as part [music] of the Vietnam War effort. The Cold War between the USA and the Soviet Union was in full swing, extending across the world and even into outer space.

27:13 We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. The space race between the [music] superpowers fueled the public imagination at all levels. Flying saucers have invaded our planet. Washington, London, Paris. The fascination with flying saucers persisted all over the world. Australia was no exception. Well, so far I haven't seen anything even vaguely resembling something of a flying saucer or even a flying cigar. Thousands of people, if not millions, do believe they exist. What do you think they are? They are real, anyway. They come from the other planets. Some of them may come from the center of the I haven't seen one close up yet. This is what I'm looking forward to one day. Yeah, you took a step towards [music] the figures and the object.

28:13 to invite people who reported sightings to talk about the experience because if the sighting was a dramatic one, they would feel, you know, I just need to talk to somebody. But if I discuss it with my friends, they say, "What have you been drinking?" But they needed to talk to somebody who would take them seriously. Although society members tried to investigate at Westall, [music] they came up against a wall of silence. All they can now find in their files is a couple of photographs and a sighting report filled in at of time by one of my student witnesses, Joy Ta. They also went to Moorabbin Airport to look for the pilots of the aircraft that apparently chased the UFO, but nobody came forward. I decided to do my own investigation. I contacted a retired air traffic controller to find out how a UFO and several light planes could fly so close to each other without a report being

29:13 made. Who was responsible for controlling the airspace? Moorabbin tower was responsible for the area uh within a 5-mi radius of Moorabbin and up to 3,000 ft. And um above that, it was the responsibility of Essendon approach. If you were in a tower, you have the aircraft in sight all the time. Five aircraft on either airspace, uh 5 mi away, in broad daylight, they should have been able to see. Maybe they have found something that uh they thought uh shouldn't be uh made public and they thought hushed up. There is evidence that the American government wanted to stifle debate about They set up a committee to objectively investigate UFOs, but a leaked memo revealed that the whole investigation was a sham.

30:15 The government's most vocal critic was the top atmospheric scientist, Professor James McDonald. Why has the government taken this attitude in your opinion? As a result of the extremely heavy wave of sightings in 1952, the CIA and Air Force became so concerned over the sheer number of uh reports that were tying up Air American intelligence channels that they wanted to get this signal out of the system, asked the Air Force, the CIA asked the Air Force for a debunking policy. The literal wording was to debunk the flying saucers to decrease public interest in the UFOs. Uh regulations were promulgated very shortly that made it a crime punishable with I think it's $10,000 fine and or 10 years in prison to release any information at air base level on UFOs. And as a result of that, nothing resembling any scientific investigation has been going on in the past 15 years. In Australia, we followed the American policy of ridiculing UFOs. So, I started searching for other sightings [music] that might have happened around the same

31:16 time as Westall. I discovered that 4 days before Westall, a witness took a photo from his backyard in Melbourne that matched descriptions of [music] the object above Westall. Then, just 2 days before Westall, Ron Sullivan was driving in central Victoria when he noticed a strange light display in front of him. But, I toward it and holy moly, the thing lit up and the 10-ft area at the bottom sort of come up and met the top. And the headlights of the car was the biggest awesome thing I've ever seen. I just pulled to the right this I magnetized. I could see all the trees on the right-hand side of the road lighting up and I said, "Get out of this one." I pulled on the left. I could feel the back wheels spinning. I got out of that. Ron only reported the incident after he heard that a young man died when his car

32:17 collided with the same tree Ron had nearly missed 2 days earlier. A couple of people in government departments come and visited me. I know one was from the Air Force. They looked at the car, just walked around. I said, "Well, let us know what you find out." And they said, "Yeah, we will. We will, Mr. Sullivan." Never heard any more about it. When I checked out the Royal Australian Air Force's list of UFO sightings for none of these cases were mentioned. Though we know they investigated them. It took 16 years for records to be made available [music] to UFO researchers. They knew what I wanted to look for and when I arrived, uh, there was a body of files there that consisted of a couple of very large, uh, postal sacks. I kept requesting more and more files and ultimately got to a point where I examined a continuity of files that satisfied me that I was seeing a comprehensive picture of the RAAF investigation and at that time, I had a shopping list of

33:18 things that I was focused on and, uh, one of the key cases that I wanted to find out about, uh, was the Westall And surprisingly with the the rest of the shopping list, I was fairly successful, but the the Westall case, given that there seemed to be uh, literally at least hundreds of people involved with it that had media attention at the time, there appeared to be evidence that there was a military investigation at the time, um, there was no Westall file. The disclosure team, uh, was between about six and nine people over over the years. As you can imagine, a four or five-year project, as it turned out, needed quite a lot of Literally was looking through hundreds and hundreds of file titles, maybe even thousands in the end. Along the way, we're always looking for files on the Westall incident from the '66. We started off with the Air Force, but within the Department of Defense, we also checked out, uh, files belonging to the Air Board, unit files from Air Force uh, bases, former Department of Civil Aviation Air Safety Bureau, CSIRO, intelligence files, ASIO. But the net

34:18 result is we found nothing in this mammoth uh, volume of of government documentation, uh, which would even begin to be a hint that there was something about Westall in the government files. So, uh, amazingly, we drew a blank. The Westall sighting had clearly been erased from the record, but why? I hoped some publicity would draw former authorities out of the woodwork. I want to shake your hand. I'm Mark Howitt from Channel 10. Joy, is it? Mark Howitt from Channel 10. Nice to meet you. What we're really trying to get now is the people who were here as police, as soldiers, as scientists perhaps, looking close up at what was on the ground. Some closure, Joy. How would you get some closure on One thing that we would really like would be that someone either from the police or the military would come forward and say, "Yes, they were there."

35:19 Nobody from the authorities contacted But, another witness did. Kevin Hurley saw the circles at The Grange on the day of the sighting and went back the next day for another look. Then when we came to the area where we'd gone through the paddock, there was the Air Force or the Army um a whole group of them there stopping us from going through into the paddock. Don't come near this in this area and we we just um headed off headed off back home. And did they give you any reason why you couldn't come through? There were vehicles on the paddock. and they had some sort of instrument which at the time I thought looked like Geiger counters. The strong memory I've got is what happened after that. About a week later, I decided to go back again to have another look. As soon as we got down to where the the paddock started, all the grass had been cut. Which was quite

36:19 disturbing. Wow. So, then we walked through that area to where the circles were. And when we got into the area where the the were previously, the whole area had been destroying all evidence. You asked me whether an R&D establishment would destroy evidence. Yes, of course they would. Bearing in mind that in the 1960s, Australia had great success uh financially with uh some of their pilotless target aircraft. Information related to some of these sorts of projects, if it was to be released to the to the wrong party, then it would have very adverse effects on Australia from a financial point of view. Any surviving documentation uh would be in defense central somewhere, uh but also um probably overseas with the ally. There may even not be anything left in in Australia cuz bearing in mind it would have been very highly classified and could well have been destroyed as so much of that sort of record is after a period of time.

37:21 So, it's no wonder that I haven't unearthed any official records but it's clear the authorities had something to hide. Just got called into the gymnasium and then these people spoke and um you know, they just sort of said, "Oh, well, what you saw was sort of an experimental thing and you know, we just don't want anyone talking about it or it going any further." So, How many people were there that came and do you remember? I think there was five from memory. And they were were they men and women or yeah, I think there was three men and two women from memory. As I say, I'm not 100% And you remember Do you remember if they were wearing uniforms No, they were just in uniforms. No, they were just just in plain suits and In suits? Yeah. And did they explain where they were from, who they were? No, not really. Um just couple of the teachers said afterwards they are from some one of these experimental mobs to do with the armed forces and stuff like

38:23 that and that was the sort of the end of it. It had to have been something that we were working on and we we we knew all about it. We were in on it. Even though we might have known the Two responded. That's one of the That really is to my way of thinking, that's the key. Is the fact that we respond, whoever it the authorities responded so rapidly. That they must have just about been sitting on the trucks with the engine And perhaps they were. Perhaps they'd received technical intelligence that there was something going wrong with this experimental craft and they weren't sure where it was going to land, but they were ready to go get it as soon as it did land. It sounds like a rational logical [music] explanation, but it needs then to be supported with evidence. If you think about how the people [music] described the shape of it, the speed, the maneuvers that it made, there is nothing around today

39:24 that comes close to that. The final proof might be, for [music] example, getting a piece of the flight and examining it, subjecting to to scientific examination and finding that it's it's a of an element that is not manufactured on Earth. Now, that would the final proof. We haven't got that. So, we're still at the circumstantial evidence stage and whether that leads you to say, well, these are from outer space, they're interplanetary spaceships, or not is is a philosophical question. That's a question of what what you yourself feel is proof. A yellow sign. I crave the proof that can be held in my hands and touched and smelled and Right. But, I think we need to make room for a little mystery in our lives as I reckon Yes. somewhere in this area. I believe truth can exist without proof

40:24 of it, and I see a real truth in the stories [music] and memories of the probably even if it doesn't answer the question, what was it that flew over What I saw, I believe is what a flying saucer has left behind. Professor James McDonald looked for proof in statistical data. His research brought him to Australia a year after the Westall sighting. I'd ordered some of his papers [music] from Arizona University hoping to find something about Westall. Wow, what is all this? There's a lot of stuff here. James McDonald's journal. His trip to Melbourne. There'll be stuff here about Westall. Westall people.

41:30 And uh recording next day a discussion with Mr. Andrew Greenwood Oh, wow. uh in connection with the Westall sighting. Well, this person is about the headmaster. He's the one who seemed to be quite a little to slice and pressure to keep things quiet. He just told me that an Air Force officer had been out to the school and I was teaching at the time and he told me that he wasn't going to interrupt my class or that I could speak to them. I promptly told him to get lost altogether. They can't have had much time with him because I know I was very friendly with the senior master at the school. He said they were only in his office for a very few minutes. And Sam will be able to come out here and meet and mutter and what not what not and all the rest of it. I'm supposed to somebody telling the RAAF that it's a lot of nonsense and sending them Victims of their own propaganda here. Now, I had further corroborating evidence that the Air Force was involved at Westall. But students said other senior

42:30 authorities also came to the high I was called down to the headmaster's And there were two men in the headmaster's office, very well-dressed Um in suits. They weren't introduced to me in person and I don't know where they came from. From my references now as an adult, I would say they were Asia. So, this is the actual office? Oh, this feels quite weird. Yes. There was a desk [music] down this side here and the headmaster was over here on that side and the two men were standing over there. And I stood with my back [music] to the Only one man spoke and he started off by we we like you to go through what you said happened yesterday. He was firing questions at me fairly rapidly. Then we went [music] into

43:32 Oh, and we suppose you think you saw a flying saucer. And I was like, well, I didn't say that. I said I saw an object. And [music] and we suppose you saw little green men. Can you remember how you felt once it was over? Um when I was actually in the confrontation situation [music] with with the men, um very very felt very very angry. Um when I came out, I think I burst into tears. They were certainly [music] Australian government and I think it was part of their job to keep everything quiet and to not let let the facts come Um they knew more than what they were they were saying. [music] It was their job to to squash what was being seen. It was a bunch of kids that saw this, so we would be able to squash this down. The authorities had found a way to silence the children. But they still had unfinished business with the teacher, Andrew Greenwood. He told me that two officers came to his home and threatened him under the

44:33 official secrets act. They said that he couldn't have seen a flying saucer at Westall because there were no such things as flying saucers. They threatened to tell people he was alcoholic, even though he wasn't. As a first-year teacher [music] with a career ahead of him, he couldn't take the risk of speaking out. The person who had taken all the risks was Professor James McDonald. His criticism of the government had provoked powerful enemies, but it didn't stop him challenging the establishment with other unorthodox scientific Years ahead of his colleagues, he predicted high-altitude aircraft would destroy the ozone layer and increase the risk of skin cancer. He was invited to address the US Congress, but during his testimony, a congressman made an opportunistic He publicly ridiculed McDonald by saying he believed in UFOs and little green

45:35 McDonald's professional reputation was James McDonald tried to create a climate of openness where unorthodox thinking could flourish. That's not what happened at Westall. I remember the assembly that we all called for. We weren't all even allowed to talk about it in school. We weren't allowed to mention it at all. There's like 20 people plus in the room at the moment, and there's a real buzz, and everyone's talking about my story. They're talking about the story. And as they're talking it through there, they're putting the pieces together. It's wonderful. What isn't wonderful in the telling of this story is that Professor James McDonald finally gave up the fight for UFO science. Humiliated and broken, [music] he took his own life. McDonald's suicide played on my mind. I began to think about weapons of mass

46:36 destruction and global warming where other brave scientists spoke out and were quickly shut down. I want my son to grow up in a world where it's possible to discuss and investigate even the craziest ideas without fear of ridicule or punishment. That's fantastic. Was it something from another planet at It certainly flew as if it was. I'm left with the feeling that what people saw was what they said they saw. Something out of this world. All I knew was what I saw and it definitely was not any aircraft of the day by any stretch of the imagination and it certainly was not a weather balloon. It still would take me to my grave. What What the hell was that? It was amazing. And something that yeah, I've never forgotten. But you just sort of had it stored in the back of your mind because a lot lot of people are skeptical.

47:36 The fact that they can travel so fast and and that they've been spotted all over the world um landings and and and very similar stories of these patches of flattened grass or burnt grass. I I personally believe that there is something going on somewhere else. I believe there's life out there. There I don't know what they look like, but I'm not afraid of them. I look up at the sky and say, "Look, where are you, you [music] people? Come and talk to me."

49:13 Soon after my son was born, I began to reflect on a story I'd heard many years It was a story about the power adults hold over children. The stories we tell them, and the stories like this one, that they are never meant to hear. The 6th of April, 1966, started just like any other day in the city of Melbourne. Then, something very strange appeared in the sky above the suburb of Westall. It hasn't been explained to this day. This boy came running saying, "Mr. Greenwood, Mr. Greenwood, there's these things in the sky, these these things in the sky." We looked up and we just saw this saucer-type thing taking off. It wasn't a plane, it wasn't a balloon, it was nothing like that. of the kids took off towards where it

50:14 seemed to go. All the students were just running all over the place. Uh hysterical. Westall High School as a as a teaching situation ceased. My girlfriend and I sat on the fence, climbed the fence, [music] the school And we were crying thinking it was the end of the world. This is a mystery story that has as its setting a school. And most of the players were school children. They had this extraordinary experience which they then tried to share with adults. And a lot of them had a lot of trouble doing that. They were disbelieved, almost stigmatized. I think like a lot of other people I just shut up about it because of the And it was everybody. You know, you were a kid, you were

51:14 making it up. So you just be quiet and in your mind you just think, "I know what I saw and no one's ever going to shake me from that. I know what I saw." I really felt for them as people had this incredible experience and yet they haven't been able to make sense of it. This is the biggest mass UFO sighting in Yet it seems to have been suppressed. Deliberately kept out of the public Like the witnesses, I want to find out Whatever material was [music] created about this story has simply been buried. And yet, this memory has survived. And [music] it only has to be slightly and it's like the floodgates open and all the memories come rushing out.

52:17 I was precipitating various chemicals in order to make crystals and I just happened to be looking out the window thinking how to fudge my science report and what I saw directly south was something that I'd never seen before. We were out playing sport on the oval. One of the kids yelled out, "Look, look up in the sky, you know, it's flying saucers." And I remember we all looked up and it really was a flying saucer. I mean, from what you imagine [music] a flying saucer, it was a round silver and it it seemed to be very low over the school and I remember kids screaming and running inside. This student came in and was hysterical, leaned up against sliding door screaming, "There's a flying saucer in the oval." [music] And of course everybody started to head towards the door and the teacher said "Sit down, it's not recess yet." And a few minutes later the bell went off.

53:17 Everyone started moving. Like a whole lot of zebras being terrified by crocodiles, I went where the herd went. Barbara Robbins was the chemistry teacher [music] at the time. She just grabbed a camera and started I went into the staff room. Because I knew I wouldn't have a chance to have a cup of tea any other time, I went to get a cup of [music] tea. And then because I was a smoker, and this this is something that has uh stayed with me for 42 years. Yes. I lit up a cigarette. [music] And so, I don't know how much I delayed

54:17 before I went outside. just took off uh out into the oval. Uh in time to see it lifting off from the oval. It was probably, I don't know, 50 ft or more in the air at that stage. I see Andrew Greenwood, the science teacher, coming towards me. And he said, "Did you see it? Did you see it?" And he points up in the air. And I said, "No." "See what?" I have a very, very clear picture of him. And I remember almost exactly uh what he said. And he said, [music] "It was up in the sky. It moved at incredible speeds. It It It It It seemed to go away. And there seemed to be light like planes. Um he thought Cessnas [music] from He thought they were actually checking it out from the Robinvale Airport. And they were circling around [music] it. Sort of stopped dead. Um and stopped dead in the air. And then it just sort of [music] started descending straight down. And as I got down about a halfway up

55:18 that gum tree or above the goal post, sat there for a while. And then it just sort of lifted straight up, and then just took straight off. This thing went down behind the trees, then it came up. It was like it had become aware of these planes coming in. And it just went woof. And just left them like they were [music] standing still. And then it went across to an area called the Grange, which was a bit of a pine plantation behind the school. Cuz I walk around with the Westall story inside my head. As soon as I enter the landscape of Westall, out it comes, like a three-dimensional [music] children storybook. It pops up out of the soil. It's like I've entered my favorite children story. The Grange was a special place for Westall students. It's where they went on cross-country but it's also where childhood games and

56:18 hunting for lizards gave way to illicit smoking and steamy liaisons. Going the wrong way, now. Let's get back here. Come back here. This flying saucer [music] thing came out of the blue like a bolt. It's intertwined with romping around down at the Grange, out of sight of the school authorities or their parents. It has that [music] sense of being involved with something dangerous or clandestine, and they were part of A lot of the kids took off towards where it seemed to go, and it disappeared down behind the trees. So, [music] we all got through this fence and ran towards where

57:21 it had appeared to land. Tania and I and this this other girl, we're over the fence. Tania was in the lead, and we ran towards where it was coming [music] down. I lost sight of Tanya. She was in front of me. A couple of girls got there faster [music] than me. I I was a bit And they actually passed out. And apparently it did land because when we [music] got there there was a great big round patch of like flattened yellow almost burnt, although I'm a bit sketchy on that. I can't remember if it was really burnt or whether it was just flattened, but it was sort of yellow and the grass was all flattened [music] in a swirly sort of a pattern. Before I got there um the disc came back up again. So I stopped chasing it. We looked up and we [music] just saw saucer type thing taking off and it seemed to turn side on and just disappear into thin air. And what about your friend Tanya? I believe she did see it on the ground.

58:21 She did see it on the ground? So I was given to [music] believe, yes. Yes. Um but I went back to school and Tanya went back to school and basically had gone all to pieces. There was definitely [music] an ambulance on the oval and I was told that she'd been taken away in the ambulance and that was the last time I ever saw her. She was just gone and she [music] never came back to school. Tanya wasn't the only person who saw the craft on the ground. Before they headed over to the Grange Victor Akersne says two objects landed in a grassy paddock where a street is Well, the kids were hanging on the fence here. It's quite a few kids there. Mhm. It's a high fence and I got up got up to the top there and all you could see is two discs, one there and one further away, probably 3 m apart. I could hear somebody in the background saying "Stay away. Don't jump the fence." And so I said, "I'm going

59:23 over the fence." The craft probably would have been about And there was another one set back a bit on an angle. Uh probably just about there. There's a few kids walking around there. And I was the only one on this side. I got up to it to want to touch it and it was well, you could feel heat about a meter away coming from it. It was pretty warm or hot. And within a few minute or so, it just both of them just lifted up at the same time about this height. And um I said, "What do I want to do?" That was breathtaking watching that. And then it just gradually lifted lifted up and then went off towards the pines. I did a rough sketch of it. Wow. Look at that. This is the view from underneath. That's underneath. There's no seams, no joints. It's just smooth metal. Normally an aircraft has uh sheet metal, pop rivets, all that sort of stuff there. This looked like it came out of a mold or something like that. All one smooth piece of metal.

1:00:24 Uh it's just incredible. It's just something like you see in the movies. But this is more than just cinema. If we look at the possibilities for this [music] story, they are We're talking about the possibility of life [music] coming from another place and just appearing one day in their And then leaving again and leaving everybody with so many questions. But with a new openness to [music] the If I'd been at Westall on that day, I would like to have raced [music] after that flying saucer and uh gotten so close to it to have held it in my hands. But the adults at Westall High School saw it differently. That afternoon, our principal called a a special um assembly and told us all not to talk about it. All I know is the whole school was told off. The headmaster says, "All you kids are nuts. It's a weather balloon.

1:01:26 Uh don't talk about it." I was prepped uh to tell the students that what they'd seen didn't exist. We weren't allowed to leave the school, at least I wasn't. My job was to walk up and down the corridors, make sure that all students were in their rooms. I was walking back from the West End. There was confrontation between Mr. Sandelbee, Barbara Robbins, and a man I'd never seen before. I thought it was a police uniform, but it was just dark blue. It was demanded that she hand over not the film, but the entire camera. I was near the gate, and the police had arrived. There were journalists outside. The police had been called in to keep the journalists away. We were told that we weren't allowed to speak to the media in school grounds. After school finished, there was a TV crew outside school grounds, so we undertook an interview with them.

1:02:28 Now, I can't remember whether it was a or school representative that came out and ordered us to go home and the film crew to leave. And I'd actually been giving an interview to Channel 9, and the policeman actually walked up to them and said, "Stop filming, and you go back into the school ground." Okay, so that's what I did. I was 12 and 1/2 years old. Because I was a mischievous sort of person, I was always getting into trouble. I had detention for actually appearing on the show, and then I got detention again at a later date after my my um picture and story was in the Dandenong Journal. So, I didn't go unpunished, but it was worth it. I now I two new leads to follow, Channel 9 and the Dandenong Journal. I rang Channel 9 first. I searched for a flying saucer story and there it was.

1:03:36 Now all I have to do is find the can with the matching number. But oddly, there was nothing there. I was absolutely devastated and nobody had any idea where it had gone. It's very frustrating, but the good news is the Dandenong Journal does still exist and I'm told it's here in the It's the only written account I've heard of from the period. So it's really

1:04:45 Something obviously happened. Some people apparently didn't want the kids talking about it and that raises all sorts of questions. Why couldn't it have been discussed? Why couldn't it have been talked about openly? And why couldn't anybody find any more information about what it was? The headmaster, for example, B, is a key part of the story. He's passed away, but I hope his children, Max and Gail, can shed some light on his behavior. Hello. Shane here. Anybody home? Hello. How are you? I'm good. How are you? Max? Nice to meet you. Thank you very much. Thank you. He played 50 games for the Hawthorn Football Club. He was a half-back flanker and in those days half-back flankers ran in straight lines. And that's what he did. He was pretty black and white.

1:05:47 And and he had a very strong sense of right and wrong and yeah, if if it didn't fit in with what he believed, yeah, he found it quite difficult. And this thing would have been seen as something that was disrupting the smooth operation of the school. And he would have been a skeptic as I mean, he didn't believe in supernatural things. He He believed in the real life, didn't he? You know, when we were kids, there was a picture on the wall of a Roman soldier standing holding his spear and the lava was all falling down from Pompeii and people in the background were all crouching and running and Dad said, "See, he's standing there doing his duty." And you know, that I mean, as children, that's we had to learn that discipline was important, respect, all those things, all the old values and yeah, he found it really hard as things changed

1:06:49 He was pretty judgmental. There was plenty for Frank Templeton to be judgmental about. In the 1960s, rebellion at home and on the streets brought many young people conflict with the establishment. Schools were run like the military and teachers demanded respect and obedience. Westall High was no exception. I tried to contact some of the teachers, but many have passed away. As far as I know, only the science teacher, Andrew Greenwood, saw the object in [music] the air. Although he's spoken with me privately, he refuses to go on the public record. Several teachers dismissed the whole thing as mass hysteria. The response left students feeling confused and conflicted. Some are still searching for answers. I want to find some sort [music] of proof

1:07:52 that this happened so we don't keep on, you know, getting [music] called silly people and You know, no one's ever wanted to know the details before. They just think I'm stupid [music] and You know, they don't want to know the story. They [music] just I said I've UFOs or flying saucers and they say, "Yeah, sure. What drugs were you on that day?" And um You know, I was 13 years old. I was at school in the daytime. I wasn't on any drugs. Slowly you start to drift. I'd like you to [music] visualize the area that we've discussed before. You're in the classroom. You're with

1:08:53 Mr. Greenwood, who was the teacher There's [music] a little fellow comes running around and says, "There flying saucers outside. Flying saucers outside. Everybody laughed and Mr. Green would say, [music] "Come on then, let's have a look." See yourself running down the aisle. We're all affected by our experiences that aren't ever properly acknowledged or accepted. As [music] a boy, I was living in a fairly unhappy home. My own father had died, so my mother had remarried and had given me a stepfather that I'd never asked for. I was quite and no one really seemed to understand what I was experiencing [music]

1:09:53 as a child. I never really had anyone talk to me about it. Just having it acknowledged [music] that what I was going through was real, that would have been a start. 1 2 3 Even though I know it's true. Wow. Wow. The more I try to see it again, it's the harder it becomes, I think. I can see bodies, but I can't see Faces, you know. But I can still [music] see the trees and the Yeah, and the things. It was The feelings don't go away. They just buried and they sort of fester a little I saw the classroom for the first [music] time. And then I saw heads bobbing walking across [music] the the oval towards the end of the school

1:10:55 ground and then there they were. Still not 100% clear [music] but I know what they are. They're they're UFOs. If they were UFOs, there should be people around the area who can corroborate what the students saw. A headmaster might be able to shut down a high school but surely not a whole Within days of delivering my flyers, I'm contacted by a new witness, Paul Smith. He used to work on a property next door to the Grange. We were loading up for market and as we were pulling the carrot tubs, [music] I looked up and I was facing the object in the sky and um I just thought, oh, somebody's got some way of uh projecting a film of something into the sky. I didn't believe that it was really happening. But um my boss turned around and he saw

1:11:57 and we stood there looking at it for several minutes. A few moments later, the children came over from the high