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The world premiere of a striking documentary about an extraordinary event takes place on the Australian SCI FI channel, Foxtel, 8.30 pm, Friday, 4th June, 2010. WESTALL '66 a suburban UFO mystery deserves a wide audience as it gives a fascinating picture of a haunting UFO incident that took place 44 years ago in the outer Melbourne suburb.
The press kit accompanying the release gives a potent one paragraph summary of the incident
"In 1966, in the Australian suburb of Westall, hundreds of students, teachers and local residents witnessed a UFO hover overhead for several minutes, land and take off again at incredible speed. Silenced by authorities at the time, and still angry about not being believed, they revisit the event as tenacious amateur sleuth Shane Ryan goes back to find an answer to the mystery. With an undercurrent of Cold War paranoia, and a burgeoning military alliance between Australia and America, their story has a deep resonance in the current cover-ups and lies delivered by governments in the interests of national security."
Director Rosie Jones came across the story via a story in the Melbourne Age which connected her to the efforts of Canberra academic Shane Ryan to get to the bottom of the enigmatic events. After 3 years of solid research, filming and editing we now have the opportunity to view the fascinating result of all those efforts.
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The Westall UFO encounter is an event claimed to have occurred on 6 April 1966 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Around 11.00 am, for about 20 minutes, more than 200 students and teachers at two Victorian state schools allegedly witnessed an unexplained flying object that descended into a nearby open wild grass field. The paddock was adjacent to a grove of pine trees in an area known as The Grange (now a nature reserve). The object then ascended in a north-westerly direction over the suburb of Clayton South, Victoria, Australia.
At approximately 11.00 am on Wednesday, 6 April 1966, a class of students and a teacher from Westall High School (now Westall Secondary College) were just completing sports on the main oval when an object, described as being a grey saucer shaped craft, with a slight purple hue and being about twice the size of a family car, was sighted. Witness descriptions were mixed: Andrew Greenwood, a science teacher, told "The Dandenong Journal" at the time that he saw a silvery-green disc. According to witnesses the object was descending and then crossed and overflew the high school's south-west corner, going in a south-easterly direction, before disappearing from sight as it descended behind a stand of trees and into a paddock at The Grange in front of the Westall State School (primary students). After a short period (approximately 20 minutes) the object - with witnesses now numbering over 200 - then climbed at speed and departed towards the north-west. As the object gained altitude some accounts describe it as having been pursued from the scene by five unidentified aircraft which circled the object.[4][5]
On Sunday, 9 April, the scene was investigated by uniformed men - thought to have been from the Australian Army and RAAF. The local police also visited the location. Witnesses report that samples were taken and the landing site was then burnt. However, some report that the grass was burnt by the farmer who owned the land to stop the children from entering his property. Several of the witnesses report that they were questioned by the authorities or warned against speaking out about what they had seen. The school headmaster, Frank Samblebe, also prohibited discussion of the event.[6] No record of this encounter was preserved in the National Archives of Australia or in the Army or RAAF files. Although government reports are held by some researchers, to date they have never been released.
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