‘They’re not from around here’: Pilot Mark Muscat stumped by UFO mystery
A Pentagon whistleblower has stunned the world by testifying to Congress that aliens exist – and it was a top Aussie television reporter who first brought his claims to light.
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What a time to be alive. A US Department of Defence whistleblower named David Grusch addressed Congress in Washington overnight to tell them the Pentagon has retrieved “non-human” pilots from crashed UFOs and orchestrated a massive cover-up of “extraterrestrial” evidence.
Mr Grusch, a former National Reconnaissance Officer for the Pentagon’s task force on UFOs, or Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) in military parlance, told the hearing that the US possessed a “very, very large” spacecraft of unknown origin and that he had personally witnessed “very disturbing” activity in the form of alien technology or beings.
They’re wild claims, but they’re being taken seriously enough to warrant a House Oversight subcommittee hearing, and Mr Grusch risks serious jail time if he is found to have lied under oath.
One of the journalists responsible for bringing Mr Grusch’s story into the open is Walkley Award-winning reporter and author Ross Coulthard.
The Advertiser spoke to Mr Coulthard about why he’s willing to risk it all to tell the story, as well as Mark “Magpie Man” Muscat about his own incredible encounter with the unknown.
The greatest story never told: Reporter’s UFO odyssey
Ross Coulthart is well aware that there are plenty within his own industry who have written him off for taking the subject of UFOs seriously. However the former 60 Minutes reporter and Gold Walkley winner is long past caring.
Coulthart, author of the best-selling book In Plain Sight and host of UFO podcast Need To Know, says it’s time to put an end to “stigma and taboo about flying saucers and little green men” and admit there are some things we just can’t explain.
The reporter has been thrust into the global spotlight in recent weeks after he published an interview with whistleblower and former US intelligence official David Grusch who maintains that the US government has covered up UFO evidence, including crashed craft and even dead pilots.
The interview was a bombshell for the UFO – now also referred to as UAP for unidentified aerial phenomenon – community, and its ripples were felt in the US Congress and in governments around the world.
The most puzzling thing for Coulthart, after interviews like Grusch’s and admissions from military and intelligence agencies that there are indeed unexplained objects in our skies, is why this isn’t a bigger story.
“The people who I expected would pour cold water on the possibility that there was an anomalous explanation for UAP – they were the people telling me, ‘No Ross, this is real, and as a journalist you should investigate it’,” Coulthart says.
“What really shocks me is that we in the media have not been doing a very good job of covering this issue. We’ve let a stigma and a taboo about flying saucers and little green men dictate our perception of the issue even though – I can tell you candidly – that there are people in the US Department of Defence and even in our own intelligence community here in Australia who are saying to me this is real, and not something that can be dismissed as tin foil hat nonsense. There really is a phenomenon that is anomalous which has been publicly admitted to Congress.”
Coulthart says that along with the stigma attached to even talking about UFOs there was also a case of people suffering from “ontological shock”. Essentially, it’s an issue so fundamentally life altering that is just easier to ignore it.
“I went through an ontological shock myself, but I have never considered not telling the story,” Coulthart says.
“There are things I am not revealing publicly that I know from multiple sources which I do think need to be protected by national security. I can understand why a decision has been made not to reveal aspects of potential weaponry technology that could be incredibly dangerous in the wrong hands. But if multiple sources are telling me the truth, one of them being David Grusch, then I believe the evidence is overwhelming that the United States is on the cusp of an admission that we are not alone.
“When I started investigating Grusch I spoke to very senior people at a very high level in the US defence and intelligence community. They vouched for him and said he was a man of enormous reputation, great credibility and what he said I could take to the bank. I just see this like any other story. This is a real story, and the mockery and taboo and stigma associated with the UAP issue is no longer legitimate. Like or lump it, the media is going to have to engage with this topic at some point.”
And, according to Coulthart who has spoken to hundreds of Australians who say they’ve seen UFOs while researching In Plain Sight and since, South Australia has plenty of activity of its own.
“There have been anomalous objects frequently sighted over the most sensitive military instillations in Australia,” he says.
“Particularly Pine Gap and at North West Cape, up near Exmouth.
“And in my book I write about Maralinga, and the nuclear tests there in the 1950s and 1960s. It’s incontrovertible that there were multiple sightings of what appeared to be intelligently controlled craft taking an intelligent interest in nuclear weapons testing at Maralinga.
“And there is a lot of evidence to suggest that something has been coming up out of the sea over on the Eyre Peninsula. I’m in touch with Aboriginal communities in that area and they frequently call me to let me know that they’re seeing strange objects hovering over the water and coming over Eyre Peninsula.
“And there were two little old ladies on a beach in the 1950s or 60s, and they saw a craft – there’s no other word for it – hovering over the water, and the same object was seen about 10 minutes later hovering over Maralinga.”
Coulthart says he has spoken with Mark Muscat about his sighting, and said the Adelaide pilot “impresses me as a highly credible and reliable witness”.
“And I admire the fact that he’s gone as far as he’s gone because it takes courage for pilots to speak about this stuff. I’ve spoken to pilots in the Australian Air Force who have seen objects flying intelligently next to their aircraft and they have photographed them. When they tell their commanders they’re told to shut up about it.”
Coulthart says that at the end of the day he treats the UFO phenomenon like any other story, albeit an incredibly exciting one.
“I can’t say anything for sure because I’m just a journalist and a journalist is only as good as their sources, but what these sources are telling me is that we’re not alone.”
‘The lights are coming closer and closer...’
It was supposed to be a routine sightseeing flight, a quick cruise down the coast and a loop back over the lights of the city. Mark Muscat could never have known that the joy ride would change his life forever.
“I picked her up from the backpackers inn. It was on Wright Street,” Muscat says of the German tourist who came flying with him on that winter’s night in July, 1998.
The Adelaide pilot was also driving tourist buses at the time, but he had a dream of turning his love of flying into a full-time living.
Airline pilots made big money back then, travelling the globe, going to parties with glamorous people. First, though, you had to get your hours up, so Muscat would recruit bus passengers for joy flights over Adelaide and off the coast, taking in the sights and the lights.
It was an enjoyable way to spend an evening and it filled the log book.
“So we took off, and I did what was called a Brighton departure,” Muscat says.
“It’s a set route that you follow … basically Parafield, right down to Brighton over the city, and then along the coast and back. It takes about an hour.”
Muscat remembers it being a clear night, perfect for flying. He took his passenger down the coast, did a couple of loops over the town and came back over the gulf.
And that’s when he saw it.
“To my left I saw something like a meteorite,” Muscat says.
“But instead of coming from top to bottom like a meteorite usually would, it went from left to right across the Gulf, which was pretty much in darkness.
“And it joined a group of lights in the distance, and they were orange. I didn’t know how many there were at that stage, but there were a few.
“And they it got closer, I decided I’d call the air traffic controller. The aeroplane’s registration was Lima Papa Kilo, so I called in, ‘Lima, Papa, Kilo to Adelaide approach … I have multiple traffic at 12 o’clock, same height, request vectors – you know, can I turn to the right or left or climb?
“They come back with, ‘no traffic’. And the girl looks at me and I look at her.
“And we keep going a little bit further north and the lights are coming closer and closer. I called again and I said, ‘look this I’ve got traffic at 12 o’clock – what can I do? Again they said, ‘no traffic’.”
Muscat said the radar operator requested that the tower make a visual inspection, and again the response was that there was nothing in his airspace.
“So that’s now I’m really confused,” he says.
“The girl’s seeing it, I’m seeing it, but they’re not seeing it on the radar? These are physical things coming towards me.
“As they got really close I thought I would hit the landing lights. I thought, ‘if they’re manned then they’ll see the lights and go around me’.”
But instead of hitting the landing lights, Muscat accidentally turned all of the plane’s lights off, effectively making him invisible in the night sky. The exact opposite of what he was trying to achieve.
Muscat was now convinced he was about to be involved in a mid-air collision, one likely to end his life and that of his passenger.
“Just as I start to think, ‘this is it’ they spread out into a circle,” he says.
“So three one side, three the other, and I just punched it through the middle.”
Muscat’s memory of what he saw when he flew through the middle of the unidentified crafts has never left him.
He says they were all orange, but a type of orange he’d never seen before, a colour he describes as “futuristic”, and certainly not something he’d ever observed on aircraft lights.
Each craft was roughly the size of a car, but spherical in shape, and as they passed Muscat’s plane they blocked out the lights of the city, convincing him they were solid and not gas.
Seriously shaken, the pilot landed and immediately rang the Bureau of Meteorology.
“I had one of those big brick phones – it was 1998 – and I asked have you got any weather balloons that have gone missing?,” Muscat says.
The answer was no, so after dropping his passenger back at her hostel and promising to catch up later for a debrief, Muscat stopped in to see his father, a producer with the ABC.
“I walked in and the first thing he said to me was, ‘are you alright? You look like you’ve seen ghost’. “And I said, ‘well, I don’t know what I’ve seen dad’.”
Muscat’s father urged him to call well known Adelaide UFO researcher Colin Norris, something he was reluctant to do given it was now 11pm.
“I rang him and I said, ‘look my name’s Mark, sorry to ring so late but I’m a pilot. And I just flew through … something’.”
Happy to take the call Norris grabbed a tape recorder and let Muscat tell his story before telling the pilot that he’d already received several reports from people who’d observed the UFOs from the ground.
In an interesting twist, Muscat says he was later contacted by a person who was working the radar that night who admitted that he did see the six crafts on the screen. Officially, though, it never happened.
Muscat says he’s been forever conflicted about how he feels about his close encounter.
“It changed my life,” he admits.
“I was doing the night flying trying to build up my night hours because it was a requirement back then to get your commercial pilot’s licence.
“And I actually had enough hours, a little bit more than enough actually, but I’ve never flown at night since then.”
His dream to become an airline pilot died on that night, and he concentrated instead on seaplanes, which are restricted to daytime flying.
Muscat has, of course, thought a lot about what those six craft could have been on that July night.
“I mean, it’s either military or it’s not, right?” he reasons.
“And if it was military then they’re doing pretty well to be flying around without wings.
And without making noises or having windows.
“So that makes me think, well, maybe it’s not military. And I don’t think it’s from another country. So the only the only thing I can say is yeah, it’s got to be from somewhere else.
“And I’ve never been big on aliens and all that stuff, but having that experience puts me in a pretty good position to comment on what I saw. And basically, I would just say they’re not from around here.”
Asked if he wished he’d never seen the craft, Muscat is conflicted.
“Look if I hadn’t seen them I’d probably be retiring now from flying an a380 Airbus, probably with millions of dollars instead of struggling like I am now,” he says.
“But those 380 pilots might have lots of money, but they didn’t get to fly through six UFOs.
“Now that might have scared the willies out of me, but it is something that money can’t buy.”
Muscat’s says he’s had a great career flying people, often celebrities, around the tropics and dropping them on deserted beaches and islands.
And he’s also found fame with his incredible magpie call, attracting more than a quarter of a million Tik Tok followers, appearing on Australia’s Got Talent and even being offered movie rolls.
He says he’s buoyed by what appears to be a new era of acceptance when it comes to UFOs, with everyone from the Pentagon to commercial pilots admitting that there are things in the sky for which there are no simple explanations.
Muscat tells a particularly chilling tale of a pilot he worked with who always laughed at his story – until he had an even more unnerving encounter himself.
“Basically he always said I was crazy, you know,” he says.
“Have another drink or whatever. Anyway, one night I’m asleep and the phone’s ringing. And I answered the phone he says he was working in Broome, but he’d flown to Perth to pick up a car he’d bought and he’s driving it back.
“He said he was driving back and the bitumen turned to dirt. There were dead cows on the side of the road. Then the whole area lit up. He looked up, and there was a big orange light above him.
“He turned the car around and he bolted, and as soon as he got coverage he rang me and said, ‘Mark, I’m sorry I didn’t believe you’.”
SOUTH AUSTRALIAN CLOSE ENCOUNTERS
The Knowles family, Nullarbor Plain, 1988
A Perth family say they were terrorised by a UFO which plucked their car from the road on the Nullarbor Plain, according to an Advertiser report from the time on what is almost certainly the most famous close encounter in South Australian history.
Police said they were taking the report seriously after investigating damage to the car, which was covered in an ash-type substance.
A truck driver and a car driver also witnessed the bizarre event, after being chased by the UFO along the Eyre Highway just inside the Western Australia border.
Mrs Faye Knowles and her three sons, Patrick, 24, Sean, 21, and Wayne, 18, were about 40km west of Mundrabilla driving toward South Australia when they first saw the glowing object about 2.45am.
They told police they had watched as it chased the truck and car, which were travelling in the
opposite direction, before turning and landing on their own vehicle.
“It apparently picked the car up off the road, shook it quite violently and forced the car back
down on the road with such pressure that one of the tyres was blown,” a police spokesman said.
“While this was happening the family said their voices were distorted and it was as if they were talking in slow motion.”
Mrs Knowles told police the UFO turned the car around and placed it back on the road facing in the opposite direction.
Once they were back on the road they had jumped out and fled into the bush where they hid for some time before going back and changing the wheel.
They drove to Ceduna in the far west of South Australia and reported the incident to local police.
By chance, crime scene investigators from Port Lincoln were in Ceduna and examined the car.
“We have to take it seriously, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t,” Sergeant Fred Longley, of Ceduna police, said. “There were too many witnesses for us not to.
“The car was damaged and was covered in ash from the object and they were clearly shaken up.”
Sergeant Longley said the Knowles drew a diagram of the UFO which looked like an egg in an egg cup.
Kimba, Eyre Peninsula, 1973
The witness was driving along Eyre Highway towards Kimba at 9.50pm when he
saw a strange red-orange light to the side of the road, 3m high and 1.5m
in diameter.
In the middle of a shaft of light he clearly saw the figure of a man dressed in white suit, similar to an astronaut.
The figure wore a helmet and mask and was suspended 1m in the air.
The incident was reported to police officer who stated that man was “well known and responsible type who is convinced of what he saw and had not been drinking alcohol”.
The police officer also stated that he received two other independent reports of the sighting. After investigating the RAAF determined no cause, although suggested that the event may have been caused by phenomenon called ignis fatuus, or will o’the wisp – methane gas released by decaying vegetation and spontaneously igniting.
Flinders Park, Adelaide, 1969
Noise woke the witness at 2.50am on the morning of February 17, 1969.
The witness saw a silver-grey inverted saucer on the ground
surrounded by pure white light. They also say they saw a humanoid figure walking around the object and heard beeps – similar to morse code – for about 10 minutes.
Woomera, 1952
Five witnesses were at the Woomera West Open Air Theatre when they sighted an object, variously described as a “cigar” an “airship” and “cylindrical”with an “exhaust” at the rear.
It travelled horizontally from west to east, possibly NW to SE. One witness reported “two portholes with internal lighting”. It was moving quickly, with no noise noted.
Maralinga, 1960
A formerly confidential two-page report detailed sightings of an unidentified flying object near Wewak, a nuclear weapons testing range some 24km from Maralinga Village.
In the report, written on July 24, 1960 by security officer JJA Hanlon, many witnesses reported with small variations of detail a bright light moving across the sky from direction of Wewak.
The report dismissed missile testing, high flying aeroplanes and practical jokes before concluding that no further investigation can be carried out but that it was probably either meteor or static electricity from balloons used as instrumentation in the tests at Wewak.
Lower Eyre Peninsula, 1973
A report in the Port Lincoln Times stated: “A photograph has been taken of the UFO seen by a number of people in the Cummins district recently.”
Mr Gordon Fuss took the black and white shot of the object from his home at Cockaleechie. He described it as being red on top, changing to orange on its underside.
When it moved behind a cloud, it lit up.
Mr Fuss tried to look at the UFO through a telescope but had to abandon this as the magnified light of the object was so intense.
It wasn’t the only sighting that week. The same article states: “The car was in a circle of light as though someone had a searchlight on us”, Mr Dean Lodge of Tumby Bay said in describing his experience with a UFO at the weekend.
He and his wife Kay were travelling south into Tumby Bay between 2am and 3am and were about six miles from the township when their vehicle was enveloped in a bright light.
“I thought the car was on fire and pulled over,” Mr Lodge said.
“As I stopped the light quickly faded away. We saw nothing above us.”
Mr Lodge said the light had been bright enough to read by and the incident had frightened his wife who was “still shaking that afternoon”.
The story continued with a third sighting.
“I was blinded by the glare as the light turned a bright red orange and rose suddenly into the
air,” Mr Les Jordon of the Uley Pumping Station said in describing the UFO he and his wife Kit saw.
Mrs Jordon said her husband was a big man who did not frighten easily but that he had looked very “scared” when he returned to the house after the UFO had taken off.
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