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(dramatic music)

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- [Voice Over] Soon after my son was born,

I began to reflect on a story I'd heard

many years before.

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.

(dramatic music)

(train cars rattling)

The 6th of April, 1966 started just like any other day.

In the city of Melbourne.

(horses hoofs on the stones, kids playing)

Then something very strange appeared in the sky,

above the suburb of Westall.

That hasn't been explained until this day.

- This boy came running in and said 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 off towards

where it seemed to go.

- All the students were just running

all over the place, hysterical.

- Westall High School, there's a teaching situation ceased.

- My girlfriend and I sat on the fence,

climbed a fence at the school boundary.

And we were crying thinking it was the end of the world.

(orchestral music)

- [Voice Over] 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 elders, 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 ridicule.

And it was everybody, you know,

you were a kid, you were making it up.

So you'd 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.

- [Voice Over] I really felt for them as people

who had this incredible experience

and yet they haven't been able to make sense of it.

(suspenseful music)

This is the biggest mass UFO sighting

in Australia, yet it seems to have been suppressed.

Deliberately kept out of the public view.

Like the witnesses, I want to find out why.

Whatever material was created about this story

has simply been buried and yet this memory

has survived, and it only has to be

slightly pricked and it's like the floodgates open.

And all the memories come rushing out.

- It 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, directly south, it 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 a flying saucer.

It was a round, silver disc and it seemed

to be very low over the school and I remember

kids screaming and running inside.

- A student came in, was hysterical,

leaned up against a sliding door,

screaming there's a flying saucer in the oval .

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.

(bell ringing)

- Everyone started moving like a whole lot of zebras

being terrified by crocodiles.

I went through the whole bunch.

(screaming)

Barbara Romans was the chemistry teacher at the time,

she just grabbed her camera and started clicking.

(camera snapping and people screaming)

- 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 tea.

And then because I was a smoker,

and 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 before I went outside.

- Everyone just took off out into the oval,

in time to see it lifting off from the oval.

It was probably, I don't know, 50 feet 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 pointed up in the air, and I said "No, see what?"

I have a very, very clear picture of him

and I remember almost exactly what he said.

And he said "It was up in the sky,

"it moved at incredible speeds,

"it hovered, it seemed to go away

"and there seemed to be lights like planes."

And he thought Cessnas from, he thought they were

actually checking it out from an urban airport.

And they were circling around it.

- Sort of stopped dead,

stopped dead in the air,

and then it just sort of started

descending straight down, and I'd say it got down

to about half that gumbtree or above the goal post

and 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 woosh,

and just left 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.

(pine needles crunching underfoot)

- [Voice Over] Because 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

children's story book, it pops up out of the soil.

It's like I've entered my favorite children's story.

(suspenseful piano music)

(laughter)

The Grange was a special place for Westall students.

It's where they went on cross-country runs,

but it's also where childhood games

and hunting for lizards gave way

to illicit smoking and steamy liasons.

- I'm going the wrong way now, it must be back here.

This flying saucer thing came out of the blue

like a bolt.

It's intertwined with romping around

out at the Grange, out of sight of the

school authorities or their parents.

It has that sense of being involved with something

dangerous, or clandestine,

and they were part of it.

- A lot of the kids took off towards

where it seemed to go, and it disappeared

down behind the trees so we all got through this fence

and ran towards where it had appeared to land.

- Tanya and I, and this 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 of me.

- A couple of girls got there faster than me.

I was a bit slow, and they actually passed out.

And apparently it did land, because when we 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 in a swirly sort of a pattern.

- Before I got there, the disc came back up again

so I stopped chasing it.

- We looked up and we just saw this 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.

- She did see it on the ground?

- So I was led to believe, yes, - Yes?

but I went back to school and Tanya went back to school

and basically had gone to pieces.

There was definitely 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.

- Wow.

- She was just gone, and she never came back to school.

(birds calling)

- [Voice Over] Tanya wasn't the only person

who saw the craft on the ground.

Before they headed over to the Grange,

Victor Zakruz says two objects

landed in a grassy paddock

where a street is now.

- All the kids were hanging on the fence

there's quite a few kids there.

- Uh huh.

- It's a high fence and I got up

got up to the top there

and all you could see was two discs.

One there and one a bit further away

probably three meters apart.

I could hear somebody in the background saying

"Stay away, don't jump the fence!"

and so I thought, well, I'm going over the fence.

The craft probably would have been about there

and there's another one set back a bit on an angle

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 minute or so it just,

both of them just lifted up at the same time

about this high.

(speaking quickly to self, not able to be understood)

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.

- [Interviewer] Wow, look at that!

This is the view from underneath?

- [Victor] That's underneath.

There's no seams, no joins,

it's just smooth metal.

Normally an aircraft has shaped metal,

pop rivets, all that sort of stuff.

This looked like it had come out of a mold

or something like that.

All one smooth piece of metal.

It was just incredible.

It was just something like you see in the movies.

- [Voiceover] But this is more than just cinema.

If we look at the possibilities for this story

they are extraordinary.

I'm talking about the possibility of life

coming from another place and just appearing

one day in their midst.

And then leaving again and leaving everybody

with so many questions.

But, with a new openness to the beyond.

If I'd been in Westall on that day

I would like to have raced after that flying saucer

and gotten so close to it to have

held it in my hands.

(dramatic music and kids crying out)

But the adults at Westall High School

saw it differently.

- That afternoon our principal called a special

assembly and told us all not to talk about it

- All I know is the whole school was told off.

The Head Master says, "Well, you kids are nuts,

"it's a weather balloon, don't talk about it."

- I was prepped

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

and make sure that all students were in their rooms.

I was walking back from the west end,

there was a confrontation between Mrs. Amblebee,

Barbara Robins, and a man I'd never seen before.

I thought it was a police uniform

but it was just open.

He 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 were being called in to tkeep

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.

Now, I can't remember whether it was a

principle or a 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 a half 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 picture and story was in the

Dandylion Journal.

So I didn't go unpunished but it was worth it!

(laughter)

(windshield wipers swishing)

I now had two new leads to follow,

Channel 9 and the Dandylion Jounal.

I rang Channel 9 first.

They searched for a flying saucer story

and there it was.

(suspenseful music)

(metal grating on metal)

Now all I have to do is find the can

with the matching number.

(suspenseful music)

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 Dandylion Journal

does still exist and I'm told it's here

in the library.

It's the only written account I've heard of

from the period, so it's really precious.

(bouncy string orchestral music)

(echo-y voices from other parts of the room)

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?

And why couldn't anybody find any more information

about what it was?

The Head Master, Craig Samblebe

is a key part of the story.

He's passed away, but I hope his children

Max and Gayle

can shed some light on his behavior.

Hello?

It's Shane here, anybody home?

Hello, how are you?

- [Max] I'm good, how are you?

- Max?

Nice to meet you.

- [Max] Nice to meet you.

- Thank you very much, thank you. - [Max] Come in.

He played 50 games for the Hawthorne 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

and he had a very strong sense of right and wrong.

If it didn't fit in with what he believed

then 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 well,

I mean, he didn't believe in supernatural things.

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 Pompei

and people in the background were all

crouching and running.

Dad said, see, he's standing there doing his duty.

That, I mean as children that's,

we had to learn that discipline was important,

respect, all those things.

All the old values.

Yeah, he found it really hard

as things changed to,

he was pretty judgmental.

(protesters chanting)

- [Voiceover] There was plenty for Craig Samblebe

to be judgemental about.

(protesters chanting)

(helicopter blades beating)

In the 1960's, rebellion at home and on the streets

brought many young people into conflict

with the establishment.

Schools were run like the miltary

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 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 of proof

that this happened

so we don't

keep on, you know

getting called silly people.

No ones ever wanted to know the details before,

they just think I'm stupid.

They don't want to know the story

they just, I've said "I've seen UFOs or flying saucers."

and they say "Yeah, sure, what drugs were you on that day?"

I was 13 years old, I was at school, in the daytime.

I wasn't on any drugs.

- [Harry] Slowly you start to drift.

I'd like you to visualize

the area that we had discussed before.

You're in the classroom,

you're with Mr. Greenwood who was the teacher there

there's a little fellow comes running around and says

"There are flying saucers outside!

"Flying saucers outside!"

Everybody laughed and Mr. Greenwood said

"Come on then, let's have a look!"

See yourself running down the oval.

(dreamy music)

- [Voiceover] We're all effected by our experiences

that aren't ever properly acknowledged or accepted.

As 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 powerless and

no one really seemed to understand

what I was experiencing as a child.

I never really had anyone talk to me about it.

Just having it acknowledged, that what I was going through

was real, that would have been a start.

- [Harry] One, two, three.

- Even though I know it's true,

the more I try to see it again the harder

it becomes, I think.

I can see bodies but I can't see people, faces.

- [Harry] Uh huh.

- I can still see the trees, and the,

it was, yeah.

- [Voiceover] The feelings don't go away,

they just get buried

and they sort of fester a little bit.

(trppy guitar music)

- I saw the classroom for the first time

and then I saw heads bobbing,

walking across 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 UFOs.

- [Voiceover] If they were UFOs,

there should be people around the area who can

corroborate what the students saw.

A Head Master might be able to shut down a high school

but surely not a whole suburb?

Within days of delivering my flyers

I'm contacted by a new witness, Paul Smith

who used to work on a property next door

to the Grange.

- [Paul] We were loading up for market

and as we were pulling the carrots up

I looked up and I was facing the object in the sky

and I just thought,

"Oh, somebodies got some way of

"projecting a film or something into the sky."

I didn't believe that it was really happening.

But my boss turned around and he saw it

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 and they sort of took a while

to make up their mind whether they would

come onto the property realizing it's private property.

And they decided they'd come in anyway and they did,

they ran straight over the market garden

and they crossed and walked down here

to this corner.

After a while trucks turned up

with, it looked like army trucks.

- Right.

- And there would have been about 20 guys got out.

- About how long after the objects had

vanished in the trees?

- Oh, I think it was only 20 minutes,

which is not a long time.

- How did you know they were from the army?

- Well, they were khaki colored trucks,

covered in patches, sort of, to hide?

- Like camouflage? - Camouflage trucks, yes!

And it was the long ones that carry quite a few people

and a couple of jeeps.

- So a couple of trucks and couple of jeeps? - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And about 20 men? - Yeah, yeah.

In uniform?

- Yeah, yeah.

- And the uniforms were what sort of uniforms?

- Just khaki colored uniforms.

- Just khaki? - Yeah.

No other, you 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 possible have come from?

- It's quite evident that there was no depolyable troops

available in Mebourne at the time.

The main units were all logistic,

supply battalions and so forth at places like

Broad Meadows.

There were lots of citizen military forces,

today's equivalent of the army reserve,

hard time units.

But they couldn't have responded

so rapidly.

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, probably working for

defense and probably wearing the sort of work dress

that civilians working for, say the Department of Supply,

say the research and development establishments

of the period, the sort of work dress that those

personnel wore.

- [Voiceover] I discovered that other people in uniform

were seen in the area on the day of the sighting.

Les Medew went to the Grange with his younger sister

but the saw what seemed to be a different unit.

- [Les] We hid behind this tree.

A bit fortunate, 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 around.

He was engaging.

This was a farmer who's decided to help out.

(ducks calling)

We observed two army trucks,

two men in camouflage and

two men in blue uniforms.

And it appeared that a soldier was using a

metal mine detector.

He was walking around sweeping, back and forth.

- Get down, he'll see us!

- [Les] The next time I see them, they turned and they

started kicking violently at the ground.

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!

- [Les] We had no idea what would walk in to,

we didn't know what those army men were doing

and, 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,

because Australians were not using camouflage

uniforms in those days, in the mid 60's.

Nor would they have been British.

The description of the uniforms certainly matches

those worn by the United States Air Force

in the mid 1960's.

- [Voiceover] There were American military

and intelligence personnel in Australia in 1966

as part 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.

- 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.

- [Voiceover] The space race between the super powers

fueled the public imagination at all levels.

- [Television voiceover] Flying saucers have invaded

our planet.

Washington, London, Paris.

(people screaming)

(horror music and explosions)

- [Voiceover] 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 a flying saucer

or even a flying cigar.

But thousands of people, in fact millions

do believe they exist.

What do you think they are?

- They are real, antway.

They come from the other planets.

Some of them might come from the center of the earth.

- I haven't seen one quite just yet.

But I'm looking forward to it one day.

- [Voice from recording] You took a step towards

the figures and the object

- [Peter] We used to invite people

who reported sightings to talk about the experience

because if the sighting was a dramatic one they would feel

"I just need to talk to somebody.

"If I discuss it with my friends they say what have

"you been drinking?"

They needed to talk to somebody who would

take them seriously.

- [Voiceover] Although society members

tried to investigate at Westall

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 the time

by one of my student witnesses, Joy Ty.

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 made.

Who was responsible for controlling the air space?

- Moorabbin tower was responsible for the area

within a five mile radius of Moorabbin

and up to 3,000 feet.

Above that it was the responsibility of the

Hessenen approach.

If you were in that tower you had the aircraft in sight

all the time.

FIve aircraft on the edge of the airspace,

five (unintelligible) in broad daylight

they should have been able to see them.

They may have found something that they thought

shouldn't be made public and they full hushed up.

- [Voiceover] There is evidence that the

American government wanted to stifle debate about UFOs.

They set up a committee to objectively investigate UFOs

but a leaked memo revealed that the whole investigation

was a sham.

The governments 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 reports

that were tying up Arab-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."

Regulations were promulgated very shortly

that made it a crime punishable with,

I think it's $10,000.00 fine and/or

ten years in prison to release any information

at air base levels on UFOs.

As a result of that, nothing resembling

any scientific investigation

has been going on in the past 15 years.

- [Voiceover] In Australia we followed the American policy

of ridiculing UFOs so I started searching for

other sightings that might have happened

around the same time as Westall.

I discovered that four days before Westall

a witness took a photo from his backyard

in Melbourne that matched descriptions

of the object above Westall.

Then, just two days before Westall

Ron Sullivan was driving in Central Victoria

when he noticed a strange light display

in front of him.

- I got up towards it and

holy moly the whole thing lit up

and a 10 foot area at the bottom

sort of come up and met the top.

And the headlights of the car,

it was the biggest awesome thing I've ever seen

they just pulled to the

right as if they were magnetized.

I could see all the trees

on the right hand side of the road

lighting up and I said "Get out of this Ron!"

and I pulled on the left and I could feel the back wheels

spinning and I got out of there.

- [Voiceover] Ron only reported the incident

after he heard that a young man died

when his car collided with the same tree

Ron had narrowly missed two days earlier.

(tires screeching and camera snapping)

- A couple people from the governement

department come and visit me.

I know one was from the Air Force.

They looked at the car and just walked away.

I said "Well, let us know what you find out?"

and they says "Yeah, we will, we will Mr. Sullivan."

never heard any more about it.

- [Voiceover] When I checked out the Royal Australian

Air Forces list of UFO sightings for 1966

none of these cases were mentioned

though we know they investigated them.

It took 16 years for records to be made available

to UFO researchers.

- They knew what I wanted to look for

and when I arrived there was a body of files there

that consisted of a couple of very large

postal sacks.

I kept requesting more and more files

and ultimately I got to a point where I

examined a continuity of files that satisfied me

that I was seeing a comprehensive picture

the RAAF investigation at that time.

I had a shopping list of things that I was focused on

and one of the key cases that I wanted to find out about

was the Westall case.

Surprisingly the rest of the shopping list

I was very successful but the Westall case,

given that there seemed to be

literally at least hundreds of people involved with it

and that it had media attention at the time

there appeared to be evidence that there was a

military investigation at the time.

There was no Westall file.

- The disclosure team was between about

six and nine people over the years.

As you can imagine a four or five year project

as it turned out netted quite a lot of effort.

Literally it was looking through hundreds and hundreds

of file titles, maybe even thousands in the end.

Along the way we were always looking for files

in the Westall incident from '66.

We started off with the Air Force

but within the Department of Defense we also

checked out files belonging to the Air Board,

unit files from Air Force bases.

Former Department of Civil Aviation.

Air Safety Bureau, CSIRO,

Intelligence files, ADO.

But, the net result is we found nothing

in this mammoth volume of government documentation

which would even begin to be a hint

that there was something about Westall

in the government files.

So, amazingly we drew a blank.

- [Voiceover] The Westal sighting had clearly been erased

from the record, but why?

I hoped some publicity would draw former authorities

out of the woodwork.

(greeting each other talking at the same time)

- Joy is it?

Mark Hamilton, Channel 2, nice to meet you.

- [Voiceover] What we're really trying to get now

is the people who are 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 this?

- 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.

(loud dramatic music)

- [Voiceover] Nobody from the authorities

contacted me.

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.

- Yeah

- There was the Air Force or the Army

a whole group of them there

stopping us from going through into the paddock.

Don't come near this, in this area

and we just headed off, headed off back home.

- And did they give you any reason

why you couldn't come through? - No, no.

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 disturbing.

So then we walked through that area

to where the circles were

and when we got into the area where the circles were

previously, the whole area had been burnt.

Destroying all evidence.

- You're asking whether an R&D establishment

would destroy evidence?

Yes, of course they would.

Bearing in mind that in the 1960's

Australia had great success, financially

with some of their pilotless target aircraft.

Information related to some of these sorts of projects

if it was to be released to the wrong party

then it would have very adverse effects on Australia

from a financial point of view.

Any surviving documentation

would be in defense central somewhere.

But, also probably overseas

with the allies.

There may not be anything left in Australia.

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.

- [Voiceover] So, it's no wonder

that I haven't unearthed any official

records on Westall.

But its clear the authorities had something to hide.

- Just got called in to the gymnasium

and then these people spoke.

You know, they just sort of said

"What you saw was sort of an

"experimental thing, we just don't want anyone

"talking about it or it going any further."

- How many people were there that came in

do you remember?

- I think there was five, from memory.

- And they were,

were they men and women?

- I think there was three men and two women,

from memory.

I'm not 100% sure.

- And you remember,

do you remember if they were wearing

uniforms, or? - Nah they were just, nah they were just

just in plain suits.

- In suits? - Yeah.

- And did they explain where they were from,

who they were?

- Nah, not really.

Just, a couple of the teacher said afterwards

they were from some, one of these experimental mobs

to do with the armed forces and stuff like that.

That was sort of the end of it.

- It had to have been something that

we were working on and we knew all about it,

we were in on it.

Even though we mightn't have known the details.

To have responded, that's one of the

that really is mount to my way of thinking,

that's the key.

It's the fact that we responded, whoever it was,

the authorities responded so rapidly.

They must have just about been sitting on

their trucks with the engine going.

Perhaps they were?

Perhaps they received technical intelligence

that there was something going wrong

with this experiment or 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.

- [Voieover] It sounds like a rational, logical explanation

but it needs then to be supported with evidence.

If you think about how the people described

the shape of it, the speed, the maneuvers that it made.

There is nothing around today that comes close to that.

- The final proof might be, for example

getting a piece of the flying saucer

and examining it.

Subjecting it to scientific examination

and finding that it's of an element

that is not manufactured on earth.

Now that would, maybe, 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 space ships." or not,

is a philosophical question.

It's a question of what you, yourself feel is proof.

- [Norm] I know I saw it.

- [Voiceover] I crave the proof that can be

held in my hands and touched,

and smelled, and measured.

But, I think we need to make room for a little mystery

in our lives, as well.

- I reckon somewhere in this area.

- [Voiceover] I believe truth can exist

without proof of it and I see a real truth

in the stories and memories of the witnesses.

- which were probably

- {Voiceover] Even if it doesn't answer the question,

"What was it, that flew over Westall?"

- What I saw, I believe

is what a flying saucer has left behind.

- [Voiceover] Professor James McDonald

looked for proof in statistical data.

His research brought him to Australia

a year after the Westall sighting.

I had ordered some of these papers

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 may be stuff in here about Westall.

There has to be.

(suspenseful music)

- [McDonalds voice from recording] And a recording

next day discussion with Mr. Andrew Greenwood.

- Oh wow.

- [Recording] in connection with the Westall sighting.

(recording too garbled to understand)

he's the one who seemed to be (too garbled) some pressures

to keep things quiet.

- [Andrew Greenwood from recording] They just told me

that an Air Force officer had been out at the school

and I was teaching at the time and he felt

that he wasn't going to interrupt my class

so that I could speak with them.

He promptly told them to get lost, I gather.

- [McDonald] They can't have had much time with him

because I know I was very friendly

with the Senior Master of the school.

- [Greenwood] He said they were only in his office

for a very few minutes and (garbled)

- [McDonald] It's nice to have somebody telling the

RAAF that it's a lot of nonsense and sending them packing.

(both men laughing)

- [Greenwood] Victims of their own propoganda

(drowned out by laughter)

- [Voiceover] Now I had further coroborating

evidence that the Air Force was involved at Westall.

But, students said other senior authorities

also came to the high school.

- I was called down to the

Head Masters office

and there were two men

in the Head Masters office,

very well dressed gentlemen

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.

Yes.

There was a desk down this side here

and the Head Master was over here

on that side and the two men were

standing over there.

And I stood with my back to the window.

Only one man spoke and he started off by

"We'd like you to go through what you said

"happened yesterday."

He was firing questions at me fairly rapidly.

Then we went in to "Oh, and we suppose you think

"you saw a flying saucer."

And I went like, well I didn't say that.

I said I saw an object.

And, "We suppose you saw little green men?"

- [Off screen] Can you remember how you felt

once it was over?

- When I was actually in the confrontation

situation with the men

very very, I felt very, very angry.

When I came out I think I burst into tears.

There were certainly Australian government

and I think it was part of their job to keep

everything quiet and to not let the facts come out.

They knew more than what they were

they were saying.

It was their job to squash what was being seen

it was a bunch of kids that saw this

so we will be able to squash this down.

- [Voiceover] 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 Official Secrets Act.

They said that he couldn't have seen

a flying saucer over 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 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 theories.

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

and opportunistic attack.

He publicly ridiculed McDonald

by saying he believed in UFOs and little green men.

McDonald's professional reputation was ruined.

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 were all called for

- We weren't allowed to talk about it in school.

- We weren't allowed to mention it at all.

- [Voiceover] 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 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 he took his own life.

McDonald's suicide played on my mind.

I began to think about weapons of mass 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.

(leaves and pine needles crunching underfoot)

Was it something from another planet

at Westall?

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 the hell was that?

- It was amazing.

It's something that I've never forgotten.

It's just sort of, had it stored in the back of your mind

because a lot of people are skeptical.

- The fact that they can travel so fast

and that they have been spotted all over the world.

Landings and very similar stories of these

patches of flattened grass or burnt grass.

I personally believe that there is something

going on somewhere else.

(dreamy zylophone music)

I believe there's life out there, there is.

I don't know what they look like

but I'm not afraid of them.

I look up at the sky and say like,

"Where are you? You people, come and talk to me."

(dreamy xylophone music)