An Influx of South Australian UFO Sightings in January 1954

An Influx of South Australian UFO Sightings in January 1954

  Port Road, Hindmarsh, January 8th, 1954, Delicatessen owners, the Hornby family, witnessed a flying saucer fly across the northern sky. Witness, Mr W.J. Hornby, stated, “Suddenly, my son John shouted that he had seen a flying saucer flash from west to east.” He added, “We didn't believe him and were discussing it when 10 minutes later the object reappeared, this time flying from east to west.”
The object was described as “crescent-shaped and coloured orange.”[1]

  On the same evening, (Jan. 8) at about 9pm, Mr C.C. Vonow of Ormonde Avenue, Colonel Light Gardens, reported seeing a glowing parachute-shaped object moving very slowly southwards as he and a companion were driving down Waymouth Street in Adelaide.

  Three UFO sightings were reported on January 9th. 15 Kilometres from Morgan in the Riverland, Captain W. Booth, piloting a DC3 for Guinea Airways, reported a strange object in the sky. No other aircraft were reported in the immediate vicinity. The object appeared to dart constantly across the pilot's line of flight.
On the same evening, Mr and Mrs Sherek of Seaview Road, Kirkcaldy (now Henley Beach) witnessed a bright “planet-like” object moving from left to right on the horizon from 2:20am, for about 45 minutes. The object moved vertically sideways about 15 degrees above the western horizon.

  A banana-shaped UFO with flashing lights on its side was witnessed just before midnight on Thursday, the 14th of January 1954. Witness, Mr C.D. Dallow of Strathmore Street, Ferryden Park, saw the object flying at “terrific speed” from the Adelaide Hills, near Magill, westward toward, then over St Vincent's Gulf.[2]

Mr Darrow was quoted as saying in The News, “I was looking at the sky for any sign of a weather change when I noticed the object. It was visible for seven to eight seconds, then it appeared to dip down, then rise again, before moving along the horizon towards the sea.”[3]

 A report was made to the Flying Saucer Investigation Committee, which was one of many UFO investigation groups in 1954. As previously reported on this blog, A UFO was also seen over Gawler in 1954 (read about it here: https://hauntedadelaide.blogspot.com/2014/11/gawler-flying-saucer.html)

On January 12th, two separate witnesses both reported seeing an object streaking across the sky at 10am in the morning, leaving behind it a trail of white smoke over the Burra region.
Two days later, on the 14th of January, Mallala Fire Brigade Officer, Mr C.W. Huxtable, witnessed a shiny silver object at 11:25am, moving horizontally across the sky. It suddenly shot upwards at high speed and disappeared from sight!

Also, in January 1954, a UFO was sighted on the 24th of January by three male witnesses. The witnesses reported seeing an unusual object in the north-eastern sky, shaped like a diamond, that was shining with what appeared to be a searchlight, which was scanning the ground for a few minutes before it eventually faded away.
The men claimed emphatically that the light was not a star or other “heavenly body”, nor could it have been an aircraft due to the terrific speed it was travelling.[4]


Have you witnessed a UFO over South Australia? Let us know on the Haunts of Adelaide Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/TheHauntsOfAdelaide/

Researched and written by Allen Tiller © 2019

[1] 1954 'Suburban Family See Flying Saucer', The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA: 1931 - 1954), 9 January, p. 3., viewed 15 Sep 2018, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article47568816
[2] 1954 'FLYING SAUCERS IN THE SA AIR', The Mail (Adelaide, SA: 1912 - 1954), 16 January, p. 8., viewed 15 Sep 2018, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article58095169
[3] 1954 'Now it's a flying banana?', News (Adelaide, SA: 1923 - 1954), 15 January, p. 26., viewed 15 Sep 2018, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article134473724
[4] 1954 'Unusual Object in Sky', Quorn Mercury (SA: 1895 - 1954), 28 January, p. 1. , viewed 15 Sep 2018, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article213711009

Kangaroo Island UFO Sightings: 1964 & 1998

Kangaroo Island UFO Sightings: 1964 & 1998

In August 1969, apprentice radio technician Alan Potter was working at the Adelaide Airport, servicing a radar unit. He tracked a Fokker Friendship aeroplane flying from Adelaide to Kingscote, Kangaroo Island, when suddenly, another object appeared on the radar, coming from the direction of Port Lincoln.

 From the second object, a smaller object appeared to leave and fly towards the Fokker Friendship aeroplane in a straight line.[1]

 The two signals met abruptly over Rapid Bay before the smaller one returned to the larger one. Was it a UFO? Mr Potter believed it could have been.[2]

Potter worked in the Department of Civil Aviation for 25 years and was quoted on ABC Radio as saying of the incident: "I still don't think I believe in UFO’s but I can't explain this."[3]

Mr Potter stated further, "As the Fokker tracked towards Kangaroo Island, a smaller echo, much smaller than the Fokker, appeared to leave the large echo and fly in a line directly towards the [plane]."

"With one rotation of the radar antennae, that large echo had moved 70 nautical miles to the north-east, in the next pass it had disappeared off the screen completely."

More recently, in 1998, two people witnessed a UFO at Snelling Beach, Kangaroo Island.[4]

 According to the AUFORN website, on March 28^th, 1998, at around 10pm, two people witnessed a yellowish white light on the hillside. The witness described the night as being cloudy with stars and the moon not visible. The light moved slowly south along the valley just above the tree line, moving with “smooth fluid acceleration”.

 The witness watched the light move through the valley. As he watched, the light changed direction and came towards him. The colour then changed from yellow to intense white as it changed from a tennis ball size to a dinner plate size. It then changed direction once again, moving away from the witness, dropping its light intensity and size back to the tennis ball equivalent. 

 A little later, the witness watched the light, and another light which came from the south, sit near each other for a small amount of time, before both went over the hillside and out of sight.
The object was reportedly silent the entire time it was viewed.

Have you seen a UFO – let us know over on our Facebook page at:  https://www.facebook.com/TheHauntsOfAdelaide/

Researched and written by Allen Tiller ©2018

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[1] National Geographic, (2018), The UFO Sighting on Kangaroo Island: Was Australia visited by aliens in the 1960s?, National Geographic, retrieved from; https://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/australia/the-ufo-sighting-on-kangaroo-island.aspx

[2] Gorton, Stan, (2018), A UFO sighting near Kangaroo Island: National Geographic, The Islander, retrieved from; https://www.theislanderonline.com.au/story/5304616/a-ufo-sighting-near-kangaroo-island-national-geographic/

[3] Williamson, B., (2017), Untold Stories: The day I saw an unidentified flying object, ABC Radio Adelaide, retrieved from; http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-09/the-day-i-saw-an-unidentified-flying-object/8600366

[4] UFOInfo, (2018), Snelling Beach, Kangaroo Island, South Australia, March 28th, 1998, UFO Sighting Report – Australia, AUFORN, retrieved from; http://www.ufoinfo.com/sightings/australia/980328.shtml

Mr. UFO – Colin Norris

Mr. UFO – Colin Norris

30 Sept 1920 – 13 July 2009

Colin Norris, known to the South Australian media as “Mr UFO”, was a colourful and controversial figure in the South Australian paranormal community.  Mr Norris fashioned himself as a UFO expert and could often be found at the forefront of any media presentation about the subject during the 1980s and 1990s, but his story began much earlier than that.

Mr Norris was schooled on the South Australian West Coast and eventually found himself a member of the RAAF based in Geraldton, Western Australia. Norris was employed as the turret gunner, positioned in the nose of a Liberator Bomber, stationed to patrol the South Pacific.

It was during one of the World War Two routine patrols over the South Pacific that Norris experienced his first of many UFO encounters. Described by military personnel at the time as a “Foo Fighter”, Norris witnessed what he described as “flying disc of metallic colours, being brown with a purple U shape around its perimeter”.
Another eyewitness report often talked about by Norris was an encounter on the airforce runway tarmac in which Norris described a flying disc hovering over him silently. The object beamed a blue light into his head, which left a scar on his head that Norris was eager to show off as “unexplainable”.

 

Over the next decade, Norris took a great interest in the large number of new UFO sightings that were beginning to become a regular occurrence around the world. In 1957, he joined his first UFO research group, the Australian Flying Saucer Research Society, headed by Ufologist Fred Stone.

In 1962, Norris would take the leadership position of Vice President of the group after the departure of Fred Stone.
In 1965, Norris was invited to be a guest speaker at the Ballarat UFO conference, where he delivered a presentation titled History of UFOs. Later in 1971, he was a guest speaker at the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science symposium on UFOs.
Norris claimed during the 1970s that he was in contact with academics in the USSR, which brought him to the attention of ASIO.

Norris became the highest-profile South Australian UFO researcher during the 1980s, which culminated with an appearance on the Mike Walsh Show on national daytime television. His detractors often accused Norris of seeking publicity but never revealing much detail about cases or sightings.


Norris collected huge amounts of data on UFO sightings across South Australia, a collection that passed on to his son after his death in 2009. Norris was a competent researcher, investigator and storyteller, and brought the field of Ufology into the public forum with his own flair.
His contribution to Australian UFO research, bringing UFO documentation into the mainstream and removing stigma, is undeniable and should be lauded by the Australian paranormal community, which tends to forget those who came before them.

Vale Collin Norris,” Mr UFO”, one of many pioneers of Australian UFO research.

Written and researched by Allen Tiller

Bibliography 

Eidolon Paranormal Australia: UFO Sighted in Adelaide, South Australia. 2016. Eidolon Paranormal Australia: UFO Sighted in Adelaide, South Australia. [ONLINE] Available at: http://eidolonparanormal.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/ufo-sighted-in-adelaide-south-australia.html. [Accessed 14 September 2016].

Keith Basterfield. 2007. THE SOUTH AUSTRALIAN UFO STORY. [ONLINE] Available at: https://ufosa.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/south_australian_ufo_story.pdf. [Accessed 14 September 2016].

The Advertiser, Nathan Davies. 2016. National Archives’ SA director Nick Gleghorn to deliver talk on ‘real-life’ documentation of UFOs. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national-archives-sa-director-nick-gleghorn-to-deliver-talk-on-reallife-documentation-of-ufos/news-story/e3695443e883da3315f216998261eccc. [Accessed 22 September 2016].

theozfiles: The Passing of South Australia's - "Mr. UFO" COLIN NORRIS (1920 - 2009). 2016. theozfiles: The Passing of South Australia's - "Mr. UFO" COLIN NORRIS (1920 - 2009). [ONLINE] Available at: http://theozfiles.blogspot.com.au/2009/07/passing-of-south-australias-mr-ufo.html. [Accessed 14 September 2016].

UFO spotters focus on outback skies | The National. 2016. UFO spotters focus on outback skies | The National. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/environment/ufo-spotters-focus-on-outback-skies. [Accessed 14 September 2016].

Photo’s: http://www.australiancosmicconnection.com.au/images/moz-screenshot-12.jpg

Bronte Lloyd’s 1988 UFO Encounter – Spalding, South Australia

Bronte Lloyd’s 1988 UFO Encounter

 – Spalding, South Australia

 Spalding, a “blink and you miss it” town near the Clare Valley in South Australia, is known more for its sheep runs than its UFO sightings, but in 1987-1988, that dramatically changed when local farmer, Bronte Lloyd, reported a UFO sighting and abduction encounter.

 In May 1987, whilst out seeding a paddock, Mr Lloyd and his son-in-law witnessed a group of UFOs hovering over the farm. His son-in-law chose not to hang around and investigate the phenomena, but left Mr Lloyd to finish the job, and then investigate the strange lights by himself.

 The next morning, Mr Lloyd awoke early before sunrise. The following is his description of events, as told to a journalist from the Sunday Mail in 1988. (Mr Lloyd underwent hypnosis to ‘relive’ the experience)

 “I was lying in bed. It was as though Time and space were suddenly suspended: I was suddenly aware of pitch blackness, total blackness, and freezing cold. I couldn’t move, and thought I was having a heart attack. Then I felt myself floating upwards, and felt something being pushed against either side of my cheeks. I battled against whatever it was that was pinning me down, and tried to reach for the light switch, and to brush away the pressure against my cheeks. I knew ‘something’ was close to me, and that it was moving backwards and forwards just out of my reach.”

  When Mr Lloyd awoke a little later in the morning, he did not remember the experience of the night before. It wasn’t until he was shaving that he noticed three sore marks on his cheek and four more on his nose. (It would come out during further hypnosis that the small wounds were from hard plastic tubes that had been forced underneath his skin.)

A month later, in June, Mr Lloyd and his son had been out seeding a field, night was approaching, when a bright red light flew over their heads, and then hovered over some trees about 30 meters from the house, then flew away.

 Mr Lloyd’s son returned to his own home, whilst he himself went back to the farmhouse for dinner. While sitting there, his dogs suddenly went berserk, jumping about and barking, then cowering and howling. He looked out the window to see what the problem was and noticed there was something on the ground at a nearby grove of trees.

Under the nearby trees, he saw an object that at first, he took to be a car, but on further investigation, realised it was an object unlike any he had seen before.
 The object, which he described as being “3.6 meters across and 2 meters high with a circular body and square base,” appeared to be sitting on support legs. The object had portholes at regular intervals around it, and three large “head-lights” at what he considered the front of the object.

  Rather than try his luck entering the object, he retreated to the safety of his house and phoned his family, who were visiting a nearby farm, and told them not to return home that night.

 Mr Lloyd hung up the phone after speaking with his wife, and slouched in his chair, trying to make sense of recent events, when he suddenly heard “footsteps”, which he describes as “short, close together, and sounded like someone was walking in or on plastic.”
  Lights suddenly came on in the house, and Mr Lloyd opened the hallway door to see what was going on. He witnessed two small “men-like” creatures racing about at blurring speed. The next thing he remembers is waking the next day when his wife woke him up.

 The police were called and, upon inspecting the property, found a very large depression in the ground amongst the trees, 30 meters from the house. Unexplained footprints were also found near the tree line where the object had been witnessed.

 Samples were taken from Mr Lloyd by Biochemist Tom Coote, who discovered electrolyte anomalies in Mr Lloyd’s samples. Mr Lloyd’s facial wounds never healed properly, and when one would seem to recede, another would grow larger. Unfortunately, Mr Lloyd passed away only a few years later, before any definitive answers from his bio-testing and hypnosis regression could be found.

For more on this story, please visit the websites below (WARNING: the following websites have conflicting information).

http://www.project1947.com/forum/bctrace2.htm

http://www.ignaciodarnaude.com/ufologia/Creighton,Gordon,FSR,Biography,FSR1991V36N3.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spalding,_South_Australia

Books:

A Paranormal File. An Australian Investigator's Case Book - John Pinkney

Riverland UFO Sighting South Australia 2012

Riverland UFO Sighting South Australia 2012

 One night while sitting in my office, I received a phone call from a gentleman who seemed somewhat distressed and a little perplexed. Said Gentleman had been flying a small plane on Monday the 16th of January 2012 on a late-night training exercise in the Riverland of South Australia, whilst in the air, he noticed a strangely lit object acting erratically in the night sky, his co-pilot also noted the object. The pair called Air traffic control and asked if any planes were in the nearby vicinity of their location. They received an emphatic “no!” from the traffic controller, and decided to shadow the object from a distance,
They flew watching the plane from the region in Lake Bonney in Barmera to Peterborough in the lower Flinders Rangers, and only decided to turn back after realising they would soon not be able to return to their landing strip due to fuel.

The Gentleman described the object as:
“A small bright object with many lights, every few minutes would stop, dip onto its side, then spin around like a “Hurdy Gurdy” (merry-go-round). Travelling at approx. 150 knots at one point. The object seemed to keep the same speed as plane and same distance constantly. Radio interference was also present during the sighting, on a warm, clear night.”

Have you had a UFO experience? Tell us your story here on the comments section below or via the facebook page www.facebook.com/thehauntsofadelaide

Sandy Creek UFO Sighting 1963

Sandy Creek UFO Sighting 1963

 In 1963, a man from Willaston who was travelling on Lyndoch Road between Gawler and Sandy Creek (heading towards Gawler) rounded a corner and came across a blood-red coloured object spanning the width of the road. He braked, and the vehicle pulled up within 3 metres of the mysterious object, which suddenly rose about 100 metres into the air, turned on its side and shot off into the night, leaving behind it a vapour trail.
The Willaston man got a very good look at the object and described it as being about 8 metres across, and four metres tall, with a concave top and flat bottom. It glowed blood-red when close to the ground, but changed colour to a light red/yellow as it flew up in the air, then took off west towards Two Wells.

The story was reported in The Advertiser Newspaper, as taking place very close to the Sandy Creek Hotel, but no one from the popular country pub came forward at the time who could confirm the incident.

researched and written by Allen Tiller © 2015

Have more info on this UFO incident - contact us at eidolon@live.com.au

The Australian Flying Saucer Club Part 2

“The Australian Flying Saucer Research Society”

Last week, we looked briefly into South Australia's first UFO-related investigation and information club, founded by Mr Frederick Stone. This week, we are going to have a brief look at the longest-running club of its type in South Australia, the “Australian Flying Saucer Research Club”, which was also founded by Frederick Stone.

 Founded circa 1955, the AFSRC was founded by Frederick Stone, who was also the club's first president. Frederick had formerly been a part of both the Australian Flying Saucer Club and the Australian Flying Saucer Bureau.

 The group, although only small at the time, expanded its wings across the country, and in 1956 had an office in NSW (which would later remove itself from the club and become known as the UFO Investigation Centre).

 In 1957, Mr Stone formed a group in Victoria that would work alongside the South Australian-based group under the leadership of Peter Norris. This branch of the group was titled the Victorian Flying Saucer Research Society. In 1959, Mr Stone also founded another branch of the group in the Northern Territory, with the presiding President being one Duke Alley

 There is also evidence of the club having an office in Queensland and Western Australia, truly becoming a nationwide entity.

 The group, although small, was set up well with a treasurer, secretary, President and membership, and also, for some time, printed its own magazine called “Australian Saucer Record” which ran for 9 Volumes from 1955 until 1963

 In 1959, the growing group held the very first UFO conference in South Australia, which was attended by 200 people, with the Rev. W.B. Gill as guest speaker, recounting some of his extraordinary tales of sightings and UFO experiences.

In 1962, the AFSRS had its first major reshuffle of members, with a rift forming between founder Fred Stone and member Colin Norris. Fred left his own group and formed yet another group with the acronym UFOPIA. This left Colin Norris, “Mr UFO” as the President of the Australian Flying Saucer Research Society, and a new era of UFO research in South Australia.

 In 1967, another rift formed within the ranks of the club and a “no confidence” vote against club president Colin Norris was put forward, but lost. This led to numerous members splitting from the club to form a new group called UPIA.  The club was still going strong in the early years of the 2000's but since the death of Colin Norris and other group members, it has lost its momentum, and its presence has fallen away substantially in the local UFO investigation scene