UFO spotters focus on outback skies

A group of farm workers and backpackers reported seeing mysterious lights hovering over an outback cattle property in Australia's rugged Northern Territory.

SYDNEY // There has been another UFO sighting in Australia's rugged Northern Territory after a group of farm workers and backpackers reported seeing mysterious lights hovering over an outback cattle property. "We were sitting out on the pergola having a barbecue and we see this light coming towards the house," said Ray Aylett, who runs Muckaty Station north of Tennant Creek. "It wasn't an aircraft and was too low to be a satellite and it kept on coming before it flew away. "The next night it came back. About a week later another one came towards me down at the front gate blinking orange - red, orange - red. I was waving to it to try to get it to come down to have a yarn to me but they won't come near you." Sightings of UFOs have been reported across Australia for decades, and have been documented by amateur enthusiasts from a host of groups including the UFO Experience Support Association, Dark Matters Investigations and Cosmic Connection South Australia. Over the years many of these so-called ufologists have flocked to the tiny Northern Territory settlement of Wycliffe Well. "We're recognised as one of the four hot spots in the world for UFO sightings and they're seen pretty regularly here," said Lew Farkas, a former sailor who manages the local caravan park. "Over the years I've had quite a few sightings. The most common is lights zipping around the sky doing fancy manoeuvres but when they're close up you actually see the shapes of them. Traditionally they're triangular shapes, metal-type objects with portholes and they change shape. The last six months have been hot for sightings." There are various theories as to why this barren corner of the Australian continent has such an alleged abundance of UFOs. There is speculation that interplanetary visitors are attracted to the region's "natural energy lines" and its isolation. Others delve into the murky world of secret military projects to come up with their own explanations. "I think it's a combination of human experiments and alien-type UFOs watching what we're up to," Mr Farkas said. The Blue Mountains west of Sydney is another remote area that boasts frequent unexplained activity. For half a century, Rex Gilroy, 65, has gathered a mass of evidence at his home in the town of Katoomba that he said proved that extraterrestrials do exist. "I'm not a fruitcake," he said. "I've seen everything from mystery lights in the sky to saucer-type craft that hovered over Katoomba late one afternoon a few years ago. I was near a shopping centre and there must have been about 100 other people standing around with their shopping bags looking up in the sky at this blue-glowing craft." Mr Gilroy, who heads the Blue Mountains UFO Research Club, said the object was 30 metres wide. "I don't think they're out to do any harm," he said. "They've had plenty of time to do it. It seems they are interested in us. I don't believe a lot of the stories we get about beings that are reptilian in greens and blues. They probably have the technology that can propel a craft from one planet to the other in the time it takes us to drive to the supermarket. We're still in the Stone Age by comparison." But what of the legions of sceptics, who believe that UFOs are fictitious and comic book nonsense? "There are people that don't understand these things but the most vocal critics are the ones that know nothing about the subject of their attack," Mr Gilroy said. "I say they should read some of the more sensible literature on these matters. There are ex-air force personnel who've written books on these strange objects they've seen." Other Australians claim to had direct contact with alien vessels. Colin Norris, the director of Australian International UFO Flying Saucer Research, said his encounter with a space ship left him in a coma. "This craft was a round ball with a purple hue around it and it came towards me and then it shot straight into the sky at a great height and sat there," Mr Norris said from his home in Adelaide. "It was then that I got this sharp bolt to my head. It was like someone jabbing me with a hot needle." UFO investigators believe there has been a massive international cover-up of alien sightings. The British and French authorities have begun releasing declassified secret military files on UFOs and the Australian government is doing the same, although so far no documents have revealed that beings from other worlds have visited Earth. Mr Gilroy is confident the truth will eventually emerge. "There has got to be super-civilisations out there somewhere in the universe that are hundreds of millions of years ahead of us in intelligence," he said. [e-mail]