Westall (Australia) UFO sighting

Wednesday 6th April 1966, 10:15am

The Westall UFO sighting is regarded as one of the most witnessed, and certainly the most significant UFO event in Australia to date. On 6th April 1966 a number of witnesses (estimated to be over 200), mainly students at Westall High School, witnessed a ''flying saucer'' during recess. Following the incident, a number of teachers who had witnessed the craft were interrogated and threatened into silence, and the headmaster of the school was ordered to stop anyone speaking of what they had witnessed. Today, Westall commemorates the sighting with annual witness reunions around the anniversary of the sighting, and an information area and UFO playground has been built. What makes the Westall case somewhat unique in the UFO/UAP 'world' is that it occured during daylight hours, and the sheer amount of witnesses, makes this possibly the largest daytime UFO sighting in history.

The event began during the morning of Wednesday 6th April 1966, which was the second to last day of term before the Easter holidays for the students of Westall High School near Melbourne, Australia. During the morning, a number of students who were outside on the school sports field for a PE lesson, noticed the craft nearby. At approximately 10:15am, a student ran into the school building and into a science class being led by Mr Greenwood shouting:- ''Mr Greenwood, Mr Greenwood, there's a flying saucer in the sky!''.
The students immediately jumped up to look and were ordered to remain seated until the bell. By the time the recess bell rang for morning break, the word had got round the school and everyone was running outside to see. The students ran outside and onto the field where they witnessed was a round, disc-like, ''flying saucer'' hovering just outside the school boundary, over an area called 'The Grange'. The saucer, which had been largely stationary, started moving towards a line of power pylons at the south-west corner of the school, omitting a low-level hum as it hovers. 

The saucer starts lifting up and ''takes off at a high rate of speed'' from it's location near the power pylons and heads south towards The Grange. It was at this time that a worker near The Grange notices the craft hovering above the treeline, before he looses sight of the saucer as it descends towards the south-eastern corner of The Grange and over the 8th hole of the Spring Valley Golf Club. A number of golfers witness the craft as it dips beneath the trees lining the edge of the fairway. It was as the craft descended to the ground near the golf club, a high-school student who had chased the craft to this point, found it on the ground (or hovering just above it). As she approaches the saucer, it lifts off very fast and disappears from view. On the ground where the craft had been, a perfectly symmetrical round print had been left in the grass. 

Some students record a teacher photographing the saucer as it hovered near the school. Later in the day, a student claims to have witnessed the headteacher and the teacher who took the photographs speaking to person they didn't recognise, who was forcefully demanding the teacher hand over the camera and photographs that had been taken of the craft. These are believed to have been the only photographs of the sighting, and they have not been seen since the camera was surrendered.

One of the primary witnesses was Marilyn Smith (then Eastwood), who at the time of the sighting was 13 years old. Marilyn was in Mr Greenwood's class when the student came in and reported the flying saucer in the sky. She remembers the student who came in being ''hysterical''. She came out of the school building into 'The Oval', looked up in the air and saw the ''flying-saucer'' hovering above the playground. She remembers sitting on the fence with her friends watching the craft, thinking it was the end of the world as what she was witnessing was ''scary''. During lunch, Marilyn left school and headed towards The Grange, tracking down where the craft had landed, and found the grass with the round print left. There were several groups of kids what had left school and were heading in the direction of where the craft had headed. She remembers the craft lifting up and flying away at very high speeds, which she says was ''amazing''. Upon returning to school, she got a detention for leaving without permission.
Marilyn remembers that after the event, during the school Easter holidays, there was a lot of talk about the military coming and asking the witnesses questions. Whilst she did not see any military herself, some of her friends did. Marilyn did tell her parents what she had witnessed, and she remembers taking it ''with a grain of salt''. Students were talking about what they had seen in the weeks after they returned from Easter break.

At the end of the day, as students were leaving school, several of them were interviewed by Channel 9 News regarding the sighting. Whilst being interviewed, teachers came out and stopped the interviews and asked the news reporters to leave. When the students returned to school in the following days and weeks, they got a detention ''for talking'' about what they had seen. All of the recordings taken of the interviews with students/witnesses have since disappeared, despite being aired on television the night of the sighting. Marilyn believes that Channel 9 News first heard of the sighting via light-aircraft pilots from nearby Moorabbin Airport. She remembered light-aircraft flying that day.

Perhaps one of the most interesting reports by witnesses of the sighting is that  a small convoy ''raising dust'' was seen near the school on the day of the sighting, with witnesses remembering about 20 soldiers dressed in khaki uniforms alighting from two jeeps and two long bed trucks with camouflage tarpaulins over the top, taking charge of a nearby paddock which contained one of the 'circles' left by the craft. Any attempts members of the public made to get near the paddock were stopped, and upon returning a week later when the military had left, the paddock grass had been cut and the circle was gone. In addition to this, a freelance journalist who had been alerted to the sighting by a radio news flash, raced over to Westall only to find his path blocked at every entrance to the area by a cordon of what he was later told were Commonwealth Police officers.

Another witness, who came forward to share her story for the first time in 2024, was Tania Vassie. In a statement to UFo/UAP enthusiast and investigator Shane Ryan, she said:- "I find, when talking to family or friends of incidents which occurred decades ago, that sometimes our perceptions differ and can be somewhat distorted. However, NOT when it relates to major major events. The Westall incident was definitely a ‘major’ for many of us who witnessed this amazing occurrence, be it a blessing or a curse. I was one of the children who witnessed this particular event, I was the one who went shrieking into the school to inform everyone else of what was going on outside. I was one of the pupils who jumped the fence and ran to where I saw this amazing …whatever it was… descend. Unfortunately, it was no longer there by the time I arrived, but the large scorched circular grass burn certainly was. I was subsequently interviewed and somewhat gently interrogated by two men who visited the school to determine just what and how much I saw, and was instructed not to discuss with anyone, which I promised not to. For nearly 40 years I buried it in the back of my mind and did not discussing with anyone, not even my family. A big part of this was loyalty to my commitment, but a big part of it was also fear of ridicule. As the years forged ahead I got older, fear of ridicule became irrelevant and I found the courage to back my school mates who did speak up, and joined in their quest to find answers and expose what was definitely an unearthly sighting and major cover up. We are all in our twilight years and have nothing to gain by speaking up. As young as we were, we all know what we saw, we all know it was not a normal occurrence, we know it was not possible to be any of the things which authorities tried to pass this off as, all we want is the truth!''

One of the many claims that allegedly 'debunk' the Westall UFO sighting is that of 'Project Hibal', a Department of External Affairs ''secret'' project that involved weather balloons. The claim surrounding this is that one of the high-altitude weather balloons from Project Hibal drifted off course, and what the students witnessed as a ''partially-deflated'' weather balloon. At the time of the sighting, an Australian newspaper named 'The Age' described the alleged Westall sighting as a weather balloon. They said:- ''Object Perhaps Balloon - An unidentified flying object seen over the Clayton0Moorabbin area yesterday morning might have been a weather balloon. Hundreds of children and a number of teachers at Westall School, Clayton, watched the object during morning break. The Weather Bureau released a balloon at Laverton at 8:30am and the westerly wind blowing at the time could have moved it into the area where the sighting was reported''. The newspaper also reported that a number of light-aircraft circled around the object - this corroborates Marilyns claim of witnessing the light-aircraft. However, this claim has since been largely de-bunked, mainly due to the fact that modern metrological technology records that the wind was actually blowing East that day, not West. Also, the a number of the student witnesses have since come forward claiming that they see hot air balloons all the time and know the difference between a balloon and a ''flying saucer''. Additionally, sceptics have claimed that the contradictory reports as to whether there was a single craft, or three, is evidence that this is a hoax. It is very difficult to determine as whether there was a singular craft, or thee. Some witnesses are adamant there were three, some similarly adamant there was only 1.

I am in the process of trying to arrange interviews with some of the witnesses of this sighting. More details to follow.

Some very interesting interviews and media regarding the Westall sighting, much can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2imy_KgG5s 'The Westall Witnesses' by Grant Lavac.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjbTJIrMfsg 'Westall '66 - A Suburban UFO Mystery' documentary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=DZP-x4Ko_JI 'Australia's Biggest UFO Cover-Up | The Westall Incident (1966)'