Victoria’s legacy
Victoria is the third smallest Australian state located in the south east of the continent. Characterised by high rainfall and changeable weather, the state ranges from gently undulating farmland from the west to the rugged great dividing range and Gippsland forests and dairy country to the east. UAP - Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, the latest acronym adopted by the US military, is a phenomenon observed world wide, and some of the world’s most compelling cases were observed in Australia. Since the famous Kenneth Arnold and Roswell cases of 1947, a variety of air-borne shapes have been sighted and recorded, as well as objects travelling in bodies of water and through both mediums.
70 years of investigation
March 1949 marks the first occasion of a formal gathering to discuss the UAP issue in Australia. 23 people from various state and local groups first gathered together in at the Federal Government's newly established Aeronautical Research Laboratory in Melbourne, the capital of Victoria. Included were representatives from:
the British Interplanetary Society
the Royal Aeronautical Society
Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation
Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF)
Army Research Establishment.
By May 1949, this group became known as Aeronautical & Meteorological Phenomena Research (AMPR) which started to list and research UFO cases and produced a small quarterly publication called Interplanetary Saucer.
AMPR's workload increased as the world ran into its next major sightings flap. In 1951 AMPR became Aeronautics & Phenomena Research Victoria (APRV).
In May 1952, R. M. Seymour, Superintendent of the Federal Civil Aviation Department, Air Traffic Control Branch Melbourne, reported that Australian Intelligence officers had refused his Department permission to investigate flying saucer reports on the grounds that UFOs were "security matters".
AMPR decided on 6 February 1953 to form an auxiliary group called the Australian Flying Saucer Investigating Committee (AFSIC) in partnership with the Astronomical Society of Victoria (ASV).
Such was the interest in UFOs during the period that on 20 November 1953, Alexander Downer, the member for the Federal Division of Angas, enquired during Question Time in the House of Representatives about whether the RAAF was investigating the UFO phenomenon.
The Minister for Air, William McMahon, who later became Australia’s Prime Minister, replied that the saucers were a problem "more for psychologists than for defence authorities".
In July 1954, AFSIC released a study of 55 sightings.
The ‘flying saucer’ topic came under intense criticism. Public support for the continuation of investigation into the UFO phenomenon was driven by newspaper coverage of the 1954 sightings.
In 1968, the Victorian Flying Saucer Research Society (VFSRS) was re-organised and its name was altered, to the Victorian UFO Research Society (VUFORS).
The Australian space industry was in full swing and slowly, research facilities that were based in Victoria moved to South Australia and the Woomera Rocket Range. These departmental changes started to affect the administration and membership of PRV. To keep up with the changing world, in 1961, the old AMPR again changed their structure and name from Phenomena Research Victoria (PRV) to Phenomena Research Australia (PRA).
On 27 February 1965, in the country town of Ballarat, Victoria, Australia held its first UFO conference, which was arranged by W. Howard Sloane, of the Ballarat Astronomical Society. The RAAF was represented by B.G. Roberts, a senior research scientist with the Operational Research Office, Department of Air, Canberra and two RAAF officers to look after a display.
Air Marshal Sir George Jones also attended, his interest in UFOs was due to their potential impact on air defence. Keynote speakers, included Reverend William Gill and Charles Brew who gave accounts of their very public UFO experiences. At the conference, a new public group structure was named Commonwealth Aerial Phenomena Investigation Organisation (CAPIO). The assembly voted it into existence, and out of proceedings lawyer Peter E. Norris became CAPIO's first President, under the patronage of Air Marshal Sir George Jones.
Victorian groups VUFORS and PRA invited Dr J. Allen Hynek to visit Australia. He accepted the invitation and in 1973 arrived in Australia, spending four days in Melbourne, followed by short stops in Sydney, ACT, Brisbane and Papua New Guinea.
While in Victoria, Dr Hynek also met with Reverend William Gill, who was involved in the famous close encounters case that occurred in the Anglican mission village at Boianai, Papua, New Guinea. Dr Hynek also visited Papua to conduct a detailed on site investigation.
In 1974, Harry Griesberg and David Seargent established the Australian Co-ordination Section of the US-based Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS). Dr Hynek requested that Australian ufologists forward copies of interesting Australian sighting reports to CUFOS in the US.
By 1978 VUFORS had the largest membership of any UFO organisation in the Southern Hemisphere.
By the 2000s, VUFORS ceased to be active in data collection. A new group was formed, called Victorian UFO Action, served as a collection point of reports from the public and began sharing details of local cases via YouTube.
VUFOA has been active in bringing researchers, both locally and from the US to give public presentations about case studies.
Close Encounters Australia has evolved from Victorian UFO Action. As more data is collected on the phenomenon world wide, there is a realisation amongst researcher worldwide that UFO and other so-called ‘paranormal’ events are connected.
Not only are UAPs being reported but non-human entity sightings and cases of ‘high strangeness’ are being shared with us. Our team are spread across Australia, and our name change reflects our growth from a regional to a national collective with a a wider focus. We are the new generation of those who have been providing a community service as a point of contact for public reports.
We acknowledge the tireless efforts of those who have gone before us and worked hard, with little or no financial reward, to uncover the facts about what authorities have tried to obscure from the general public about strange universe we live in.