1909
25.10.09 ONSLOW, WA
(Source: Robin Northover, Post)
The next reported sighting was in Western Australia on October 25th. Mrs A J Roe, wife of the manager of Minderoo Station, near Onslow, was the first to spot the strange craft.

“It looked compact, like a dirigible balloon.” Mrs Roe said. “but appeared to be squarer and more like an aeroplane. The sun shone on it, and flashes came from it, as though reflected from something revolving, or from metal work.”

Three station hands also saw the object - which the newspapers of the day described as a “mystery airship” - and one of them made a sketch of it. The customs collector at Onslow, Mr L O Temperley, submitted a detailed report on the sighting to the Minister of Customs who passed it onto the Defense Department. Mr Temperley thought that the object really was an airship: “the work,” he suggested, “of an inventor who was experimenting, or perhaps from a foreign vessel anchored off the coast.”