Due to the alarming increase of UFO activity throughout the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney over recent months, I have been kept busy recording every report that has been passed on to me for investigation by the Blue Mountains Unexplained Mysteries Discussion Group.
As a direct result of the overload of UFO investigating my wife Heather and I decided to create an organisation that we had been talking about forming for quite some time, and at the March 16th meeting of our group it formerly became “Blue Mountains UFO Research’. Other topics of the unexplained will still be discussed at our monthly meetings, but from now on the emphasis is on UFO’s.
We have in fact been gathering together the technical talents of a number of new members and formed strong links with the UFO Society of Western Sydney. Our group’s activities have been attracting the attention of a number of prominent Australian UFO researchers, including Bill Chalker, who attended our first meeting as the Blue Mountains UFO Research Group.
Regular skywatches are carried out by our group, sometimes with spectacular results.
This article concerns not only some of the recent sightings recorded by the members of Blue Mountains UFO Research, but many other observations, and also “close encounters” that we have gathered over the last few years. The Blue Mountains have been the scene of UFO abductions, but these accounts are too lengthy for this article and will be saved for future publication in Australasian Ufologist.
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On the night of Sunday 20th January 2002, I carried out skywatches, first at a favourite location, Narrow Neck Peninsula, Katoomba which overlooks both the Jamieson and Megalong Valleys, then up at Mt York overlooking the Hartley Valley with Ann Taylor and Lee Ingley. During the time spent on Narrow Neck, about 10.30pm we spotted more of the mysterious moving sparkling lights in the distant Burragorang Valley, south-west of Katoomba mentioned by me in a previous ‘Ufologist’ article [see “UFO Mysteries of the Burragorang Valley” Vol 4 No 2 2000]. We then drove off for Mt York outside Mt Victoria township, where we perched ourselves on a large rock at a lookout high above Hartley Valley, from where we scanned the skies into the wee small hours. Apart from spotting meteorites nothing happened. Then around 2am we observed a strange, flashing, ionised blue glowing light upon a densely-forested mountainside on the far, western side of the valley.
By the time we had to abandon our skywatching, close to 3am, the mystery light was still flashing. Chances were that it could have been something quite ordinary, but I recalled a report from a Megalong Valley farmer to the south of there who some ten years ago, observed on a moonlit night, a 12m wide by 7m tall craft, hovering over his property. There appeared a bright white glowing central cockpit, and a large round light beneath the craft emitted a strong ionised blue glow that lit up the whole farmhouse and surrounding paddocks. The craft emitted a loud humming sound, which soon began to fade away as did the glow from beneath, then it silently rose rapidly into the air and flew off southwards down the valley.
On Thursday night, 21st February 2002, Heather and I carried out a skywatch on Narrow Neck Peninsula, at a spot affording a good view of the distant Burragorang Valley, with the Campbelltown and Bowral districts to the east.
As we watched with binoculars, at 10.32pm a red and white glowing light going west above cloud level was observed, passing over the Burragorang Valley. As we were wondering if it were not an earth-based aircraft, this object suddenly stopped moving at its moderate speed, and it was then that we spotted a second object emitting the same red and white glow, approaching from the west, and much higher than the first object. This eastwards-heading object was traveling at about the same speed as the other, but it also came to an abrupt halt, directly above the other craft. Both remained stationary, then at 10.38pm the object that had been heading west resumed movement and quickly disappeared over the first ‘arm’ of Narrow Neck Peninsula. As it began moving however, the craft that had been headed east just ‘switched off’!
This was not to be the only mystery sighting we encountered that night. At 11.05pm we spotted a blue and white glowing object rising up over the eastern horizon. After just a couple of minutes it ceased movement, hovering at cloud level and about 10km to the north of the Campbelltown city lights. I observed with our well-magnified binoculars, that the object appeared as if it were composed of two ‘balls of light’, the “Ball” glowing white being considerably larger than that glowing blue.
Then, at 11.15pm we observed it to begin moving northwards where it would pass high over Liverpool, but from where we were stationed, it was lost to view as it passed behind the Echo Point cliffs.
An even more spectacular event was to come. Another skywatch was carried out by myself and Ann Taylor on a high point of Narrow Neck Peninsula, on Thursday night 28th February. The full moon night afforded us an excellent view of the Jamieson/Burragorang and Megalong Valleys.
At 1.45am on the Friday morning we spotted a large number of blue, green and red lights - at least 35 counted by me - in the vicinity of the notorious Burragorang Valley “UFO base” [see Australasian UFOlogist Vol 4 No 2. 2000] These lights appeared as a cluster on the side of a distant gully and remained visible for a few minutes until they just ‘switched off’ all at once!
In the clear sky to the west and north over Megalong Valley, all we had seen were a couple of light aircraft around 11pm-midnight; then at 3.30am on the Friday morning I spotted, glowing bright blue in the night sky, what had to have been an enormous, disc-shaped craft, flying rapidly from the west, high above the clouds, then slowing, began descending through the clouds as I alerted Ann.
From where we were positioned, the craft could be seen to descend over Lithgow far to our north, and vanish into the Wollongambie Wilderness behind the city deep in the Blue Mountains scrub. This has not been the first time that anyone has observed mystery flying craft to land in the heart of the Wollongambie region.
Late one night in May 1998, a huge, glowing football-shaped craft emitting silvery-yellow light rays, was observed by more than one camping group in the Wollongambie Wilderness, as it appeared to glide slowly over the densely-forested mountainous landscape, flashing its strong beams of light both horizontally and vertically, lighting up the myriad of gullies and valleys hereabouts before descending into one gully as its lights faded.
This same type of UFO has been reported sighted before on the Blue Mountains. On the night of July 16th 1958 an identical craft appeared high above the Jamieson Valley and was observed by a great many tourists at Echo Point Lookout. Many years Later during 1974-1975, the same type of craft was observed hovering over the Kanangra Walls, far to the south-west of Katoomba and deep in the Kanangra Boyd National Park behind Jenolan Caves, on several occasions over a six month period. The sightings of this craft took place both in broad daylight as well as a night, when it emitted strong light rays.
However, the Wollongambie Wilderness, which adjoins the equally vast Wollemi National Park, with Mt Wilson and Kurrajong to the south, has long been the scene of many, often eerie UFO encounters.
For example, over a period of several months during 2000, several sightings were reported to our group, of a bluish-glowing graft seen in the night sky over Lithgow, Mt Wilson and in the Kurrajong area.
In one incident, which occurred about 2am one morning in June that year, one such huge object was claimed to have suddenly appeared above a car containing four people, as they were driving toward Bilpin from Bell. An ionised blue glow enveloped the car, and as the terrified occupants continued to drive on - and at some speed - they felt their vehicle being lifted off the road, at least 2ft[60cm] it was thought later. Then, after being ‘carried’ for some few hundred feet, the glow vanished and the vehicle hit the road. The mystery craft then zoomed off eastwards over Kurrajong as the people watched.
An enormous blue-glowing ‘saucer’ type UFO, with ten large round ‘windows’ emitting a yellowish glow, and a central round cockpit with a black rim and black undercarriage, was claimed seen by a Springwood family around dawn on June 9th 1986, as it hovered about 600 ft above their street.
The first to see the craft was the housewife, who promptly alerted her husband and their two children. The craft, the husband estimated, was at least 60ft across. Then it began moving off, slowly at first, then at increasing speed, flew off to the north-west in the direction of the Bell-Lithgow region. Later that morning the lady sketched the craft from memory and passed it on to me at a later date.
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Blue Mountains UFO Research members will be concentrating their full attention upon the mysterious happenings in the Megalong and Burragorang Valleys, something I have been doing since the 1960’s.
On Wednesday 19th December 2001, I made a lone hike out to the far end of Narrow Neck Peninsula. A beautiful clear day with perfect vision of the whole valley stretched out before me, from the Warragamba district to the east and the Bowral area southward and Kanangra Boyd National Park eastern escarpment rising up to the south-west in the distance.
The time was 2.22pm when, as I sat upon the clifftop scanning the scenery with my binoculars, moving from east to west, I just happened to catch sight of a large, silvery saucer-shaped craft, descending out of sight behind the summit of a deep gully, situated at the base of the eastern escarpment of the Kanangra Boyd Plateau, approximately 30km away. In the next three hours that I spent at the far end of the ‘Neck’ I did not see the huge craft reappear.
Back in 1973 a property owner was inspecting his cattle in his landrover one afternoon, high up on the western slopes of the Megalong Valley. As he reached the top of a hill, he brought his vehicle to an abrupt stop. Directly ahead of and below him, some several hundred feet away upon another hilltop sat a strange ‘contraption’, something like a giant-size upturned saucer with a row of windows around its base, standing upon three tripod-type legs with large square plates at their base, and silver in colour, the ‘legs’ being greyish.
Not knowing exactly what to do, the man quickly drove back to the farmhouse, phone the police and a mate. It took an hour or so for everyone to arrive, and when they proceeded to the site, the strange object was gone.
Perhaps it was this very same craft that was seen to land on a remote ridge south of the valley by seven horse riders in January 1974. The craft was observed to land among trees on the flat ground of a plateau about 10am in the morning. They rode away to report their sighting, and within an hour they returned followed by other people in landrovers. However, the strange craft had disappeared. The horse riders estimated the craft to be about 14m across.
A party of six spotlight shooters after foxes in two landrovers claimed to have seen a craft of this approximate width late one night, standing upon three tripod legs in a remote paddock, about March 1974, outside Yass, west of Goulburn. The two vehicles had just stopped on a rise overlooking a paddock. As the men flashed their spotlights about the area in the darkness, their beams caught a large ‘saucer’ type craft, standing upon three tripod legs about 4m above the ground. No lights shone from the strange object.
Then, as the men began approaching the craft on foot, there was a whirring sound and the craft slowly lifted off the ground as the ‘legs’ retracted, and gaining height flew off silently in the direction of Goulburn!
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Perhaps the most startling claim of a UFO landing anywhere on the Blue Mountains is that of the Edelbuttel piggery incident just west of Katoomba. This now long-closed piggery stood just off the Great Western Highway, near the cliffs overlooking Megalong Valley.
The owner, Bernie Edelbuttel, a friend of Heather and I, was taking a bath one dark night in 1972, while his wife was washing dishes in the kitchen, looking out the kitchen window, which faced the piggery and fowl sheds to the west [Megalong Valley] side of the property. Staying with them was her brother and his wife.
The time was 8pm when, as she glanced out the window, Mrs Edelbuttel saw an orange light moving above the trees and then descend among them behind the pig sheds. Summoning her brother and his wife she pointed out to them through the window, the eerie orange glow, some 200 yards away.
Thinking the glow to be from the lamps of spotlight shooters, she soon fetched her husband.
At this stage the brother-in-law had just left the house, intending to investigate the strange glow. Walking up past the pig sheds, he moved toward the trees. It was then that he got the shock of his life when he saw what was creating the strange glow.
There among the trees was a disc-shaped craft of considerable size emitting the glow, which at such close range was blinding! The glow was so bright that it lit up the whole area. Later it would be revealed that many motorists passing along the highway had also observed the glowing craft in the distance.
The craft had lights surrounding it, with one central light in the centre of its dome. It was this dome light which emitted the blinding glow. Then the glow faded rapidly away, leaving the mysterious craft almost invisible in the darkness among the trees.
By this time, realising what he was looking at, the brother-in-law became seized with panic and ran as fast as he could back to the house. Equally panic-stricken, the family locked and bolted every door and window in the house, meanwhile someone phoned the police.
All this time the pigs, usually noisy like the dogs in any disturbance, had remained deadly silent.
At first the police treated the phone call as a joke and took no notice of it. However, after repeated calls, two officers were sent to the farm to investigate the matter.
Within minutes the two constables arrived in their vehicle. They drove up toward the pig sheds, then alighted, hoping to see the object for themselves, but found nothing, as the mysterious craft had already vanished as silently as it had first appeared.
The Edelbuttel UFO incident made the media and soon brought forth numerous eyewitnesses who had seen the same glowing object pass over Katoomba that night. One of these eyewitnesses was a Megalong Valley farmer.
The farmer’s story was that he had been standing outside his house when, from over the Katoomba cliffs he observed a large, approximately 30ft [about 9.15m] wide, dark object descending slowly and silently into the valley, to land in a deserted field some distance from the farmhouse. There it remained for a full 10 minutes as the farmer watched. Then, silently as before, the mystery object rose into the air and rapidly gained speed as it flew off into the darkness.
Some investigators later suggested that perhaps the UFO had been malfunctioning, and that its occupants - for it was certainly being operated by intelligent beings - had landed first at the Edelbuttels’, then in the valley below in the course of carrying out repairs.
Whatever the reasons for the craft’s landings, it was certainly no Earth-based craft. One explanation which failed to hold water came from RAAF officials, who claimed the object had been a malfunctioning RAAF helicopter, whose crew had landed to carry out repairs!
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Thanks to local media coverage of the activities of Blue Mountains UFO Research, our group can expect plenty of resulting local interest and new members eager to take part in our skywatching and other activities, further investigations into the Burragorang “UFO Base” mystery, UFO investigations in the Kanangra Boyd National Park and Wollongambie Wilderness, and having their phones tapped by ASIO!
Readers can expect further revelations on these areas, and latest UFO reports gathered by our group in forthcoming Australasian UFOlogist issues.
Those wishing to take part in our activities can phone Rex and Heather Gilroy at 02 4782 3441; Email:randhgilroy@mpx.com.au or write c/- PO Box 202 Katoomba NSW 2780.
For easy access to our website try WWW.google and type in Rex Gilroy. There are no fees involved in joining our group, all we want is your enthusiasm!
Source: The Australasian Ufologist Magazine Vol. 6 No.2 Pgs 17-22 (Photos/Illustrations)