A researcher is leading calls for a federal inquiry to finally shed light on Australia’s best-known UFO mystery, Westall 1966.
More than 200 students and teachers at Westall primary and secondary schools were said to have witnessed up to three unidentified flying objects in broad daylight on 6 April 1966.
Multiple witnesses describe fast-moving, shimmering, silver objects that flew over the schools and disappeared behind pine trees in The Grange Reserve.
Army, Air Force, Department of Supply and police officers swarmed the scene, with students and staff saying they were ordered to never speak of what they saw.
Nearly 60 years on, there remains no official account from the authorities.
Grant Lavac, a Melbourne researcher, has initiated a petition for an independent inquiry to “uncover the truth”.
“It continues to be a fascinating unsolved cold case that has people asking questions.
“As a researcher I feel for the witnesses – for those who were children on the day – and want to know what they saw in the skies and why they were told to shut up about it.”
In the decades since, the federal defence department has resisted FOI requests to release its file on Westall 1966.
Three years ago, Lavac interviewed ex-students for his documentary The Westall Witnesses, and was struck by how genuine they were and how vivid their descriptions.
“I certainly believe that what they saw was what they were telling me.
“Obviously memories fade, but nearly 60 years later they regather every year to keep alive their memories and recollections.
“It was incredibly compelling.”
Lavac says witnesses dismissed therories that the UFOs were everyday objects like weather balloons.
“They say it wasn’t a weather balloon or hot-air balloon. It was like nothing that they’d seen before and moving in ways they couldn’t understand.”
Recently, an academic suggested they were high-tech, top-secret devices used to measure atmospheric radiation from Pacific nuclear tests.
Lavac hopes an inquiry could lead to the Department of Defence again handling reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP).
The RAAF ceased reporting protocols for UAP in 1996.
“If it’s just something as prosaic as a balloon, then why not now give the witnesses the truth?
“If it’s not prosaic, then it’s a compelling reason for the RAAF to devote resources to investigate (UAPs) in our air space which could present a national flight risk or national security risk.”
At the time, Dandenong Journal was the only newspaper to cover the event, under headlines Flying Saucer Mystery: School Silent and What was it?
The coverage featured a student’s hand drawn sketch of a round object with “a hump on top and round things underneath”, as well as interviews with students and teacher Andrew Greenwood.
It remains one of the Journal’s most sought-after stories, with requests from across the world to republish the 1966 report.
Academic and researcher Shane Ryan, who gathered more than 140 eyewitness accounts over the past two decades, has signed Lavac’s petition.
He says there is perhaps more interest than ever in what occurred that day, as well as in uncovering files at the National Archives of Australia or the relevant government departments.
“Given that most surviving witnesses involved in the incident are now in their 70s and older, it is time for a concerted effort to be made to bring the truth of the incident, whatever it was, out into the open.”
The petition can be accessed at aph.gov.au/e-petitions/petition/EN7396
