The Westall UFO (1966): Two Hundred Witnesses at an Australian School

Around 11 a.m. on April 6, 1966, during a physical-education class at Westall High School in Clayton South, Melbourne, students noticed a silvery-grey, saucer-shaped object about the size of a car crossing the sky, descending behind a stand of pines near the Grange Reserve, and rising again minutes later to fly off at speed, with light aircraft in the vicinity. More than two hundred students and several staff saw it; children ran to the paddock to look, and some reported a circle of flattened grass where it had come down.

The headmaster called an assembly and, by many accounts, told the students they had seen nothing and were not to discuss it. A science teacher who took photographs said his camera was confiscated by men in suits. The Melbourne press ran short items and then nothing. No official investigation was ever acknowledged, and for decades the case lived only in the memories of the witnesses, many of whom, now retired, tell the same story.

Researcher Keith Basterfield proposed in 2014 that the object was a HIBAL high-altitude balloon, part of a joint U.S.–Australian program sampling radioactive fallout, one of which is documented as having drifted off course near Clayton around that time. A large silver balloon with a payload, descending and being recovered by a ground crew, fits a great deal of what the students saw, and the secrecy about a radiation-sampling program would explain the silence. Witnesses object that what they saw was solid, fast, and flew against the wind.

Westall '66: A Suburban UFO Mystery, a 2010 documentary by Rosie Jones, gathered the witnesses and made the case internationally known. Clayton South now has a "UFO playground" commemorating the sighting. Westall is Australia's best-known case and one of the largest school-witness events anywhere, second only to Ariel School in Zimbabwe.