Locals share close encounters with alien activity
FROM strange lights in the night sky to alien beings appearing inside a spacecraft - everyday people from around the region have shared their tales.
Bundaberg
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Childers man goes in search of mystery lights
A CHILDERS man, who wishes not to be named, has gone in search of footage of mysterious lights that he says have been appearing in the night sky over Childers.
The man contacted the NewsMail last week after he sighted two bright objects in the sky on two separate occasions about two weeks apart - but within days of talking about his experience, he had a third encounter to add to the list.
The local said he usually had a clear view of the heavens as he often camped in the bush.
"I camp out in the bush and I get a good view of the sky," he said.
But it was one particular camping trip about a month ago that made the avid outdoorsman believe there was something - or someone - looking down on us.
"To the south, rising over the hill, I saw a light like a star," he said of the object that he first thought might have been a helicopter.
"It rose higher and higher and I thought 'that's not a star' and a beam of light came to the ground and there was no noise.
"One minute it would stop, then it would keep going again."
The man said he kept an eye on the object until it eventually disappeared into the night sky.
"I watched it for about 15 minutes, then it disappeared towards Bundy," he said.
The Childers man said he believed there were other life forms in the universe, especially after his second strange encounter only a fortnight after his first.
Again he said the object looked like a bright star - at first.
"I watched it for two-and-a-half-hours," he said.
"There was a tree and I was using that as a marker and I was watching that and it was moving around and it moved west and then east then rose up and down and I thought it was going away but it came back again."
The man said this time it seemed the object wasn't completely alone.
"There were a lot of little white dots around it," he said.
He said the UFOs had put on quite a spectacle.
"The way these things move is just incredible," he said.
"They're out there, I believe they are."
The man said the third and most recent experience happened on the night of July 2 when he was again camping in the bush around Childers.
"I saw one in the south east - it got brighter and brighter, it was just behind the trees on top of the hill," he said.
"And later on there were a heap of them - more than a dozen.
"They weren't aeroplanes, they weren't helicopters, they weren't like anything we know of."
The man said the objects were bright and varied in colour from orange to white, with some of them moving fast and others slow.
He likened the lights the objects projected to beams from a lighthouse beacon.
"You can see them in the sky and as you come closer it's this huge light like this super bright star," he said.
"I couldn't believe how many there were.
"It was actually frightening."
He said the group of objects had been in the same location as his second sighting and that it had encouraged him to seek out a good quality camera in order to capture footage of the eerie lights.
Bundaberg man and PoliceUFO.com researcher and website director Richard Jones said earlier this year it seemed Bundaberg had become a UFO hot spot, but more investigation and research was needed before it could truly be seen as an area of paranormal activity.
Man says he saw the same thing
A MARYBOROUGH man who did not want to be named, wanted to share his account which he believed linked up with an account published to the NewsMail website.
The man read a story on the NewsMail website about the Childers man who had seen strange lights, and said at the same time he had also seen something very unusual in the heavens.
"It looked like a star and a thin light came out of it and it was pulsating," he said.
"It caught my eye because it was like a star, but it was really bright.
"At first I thought it might have been a dying star or something."
The man said after he saw the beam of light project down from the object, he knew it was not of this world.
Bright lights capture bird watcher's attention
BUNDABERG bird watcher Richard Gear recalled a close encounter several years ago when he was out watching birds along the Kolan River near Monduran Homestead.
"It was about 12pm when I was looking at a bird up in a large tree through my 10x50 binoculars when I saw a bright star-like object in the sky to the west," he said.
"It was flat on top and concave underneath and tilted to the right.
"I watched it for a few minutes and then continued on upstream. "
Mr Gear said when he took another look at the light, he could see something peculiar happening.
"About 15 minutes later, I looked up again and it was still there," he said.
"After watching for a few minutes, I suddenly noticed several very tiny but very bright lights come up from the right and merge with the large object.
"It was still in the sky when we left about an hour later. My wife was with me and saw it as well."
Mr Gear, an avid bushwalker and camper, said it had been a clear, bright day when he saw the object.
"It was bright and sunny, close to the middle of the day, so I can't explain what we had seen," he said.
However, it wouldn't be Mr Gear's last brush with mysterious objects in the skies.
Last month, he had been camping with his wife and six friends at Crediton Hall in Eungella National Park west of Mackay when they all saw something they couldn't explain.
"One night, sitting around the campfire, my attention was drawn to two quite large bright lights through a gap in the trees," Mr Gear said.
"After drawing everyone's attention to them, one suddenly moved off while the other one remained stationary.
"The first one travelled directly over us in full view, and even though the night was quiet without traffic or animal noises, we did not hear a sound. We all thought it very unusual."
Retired railway worker recalls seeing alien beings in craft that hovered in front of train
RETIRED train driver Victor Olsen said it was well-known among those who worked nights on the Wide Bay's railways that strange lights would often appear in the clouds, but more than 40 years later, one experience had never left him.
On a Saturday evening in 1967, Mr Olsen said he was on the driver's assistant shift when something otherworldly happened as the train routinely slowed down.
En route to Bundaberg from Maryborough, Mr Olsen could hardly believe his eyes as an alien craft appeared and started to hover in front of the train.
"We were working on the train from Maryborough to Bundaberg and it was just before we got to Thabeban," he said.
"In front of us was a UFO - it was round and it was spinning and it was red."
"It was like two saucers faced together."
He said the object, which appeared to be about 35ft wide, came very near to the train.
"This round object was right in front of us, between the trees and very low," he said.
"It was just like people describe - just like a saucer with an orange glow around it.
"It was about 15m in front of us."
The experience would get even more unsettling for Mr Olsen, as he started to see figures on board the mysterious craft.
"There was an opening platform and you could see the objects moving," he said.
"They had a long neck on them and an elongated head - nothing like I've ever seen before.
"They looked like nothing on earth, like a stick with a head."
Mr Olsen said as the train sped up, so did the UFO.
"As we got over the speed limit and started to increase our speed, it kept going in front of us until it went to the right at a very fast speed," he said.
"It later came across Bundaberg Railway Station.
"The platform was full of people at Bundaberg, all the passengers on the platform would have seen it."
Mr Olsen said at the time, his team was advised not to report the sighting officially for fear of causing panic in the community.
"The armed forces told the railway to 'shut up or you'll scare the people'," he said.
"We certainly never reported it."
Mr Olsen said it was common for the night staff to see strange objects in the skies.
"There was hardly a driver who hadn't seen a UFO," he said.
He said he didn't think the UFO had made many visits after the railway encounter.
He said the only other sighting he'd heard of after it had occurred when a friend of his took a drive out to Hervey Bay one Sunday night.
"We used to go every Sunday night to Hervey Bay," he said.
"This particular night I was working and he went by himself.
"This light came down over the top of his car and everything was lit up. As far as he was concerned, he just sat there frozen driving the car."
Mr Olsen said the strange visits seemed to have wrapped up in the 1970s.
"I'm still in contact with drivers, but there hasn't been any sighting that I know of since 1974."
Mr Olsen said he thought aliens were keeping an eye on us, but didn't believe they meant any harm.
Man admits to launching mischievous prank UFOs
ONE Bundaberg man recalls having some close encounters of the mischievous kind in the 1960s when he and a friend took it on themselves to launch their very own home-made UFOs.
Party balloons, aluminium, sticks and string were all the ingredients a young Peter Bock needed to create quite a stir in the Bundaberg region.
"Me and one of my friends launched a lot of UFOs in the 1960s," he said.
"At least two of the times we launched we made it into the paper."
Mr Bock, who made the UFOs between the ages of 12 and 13, said he'd studied up and made the most of his dad's garage for his experiments.
"We'd fill the balloons with hydrogen with a really long string and a big sheet of aluminium," he said.
Sometimes, he said humble cellophane had been used to create the illusion of something from another planet.
"We had 30 or 40ft of fishing line that went down to a bamboo stick and the cellophane was stuck to it," he said.
"The speed of our launches was pretty high and often the aluminium ripped.
"It was actually pretty dangerous what we were doing."
Mr Bock said he'd carefully stay quiet when reports of his "UFOs" surfaced around town, with locals never suspecting the intergalactic sightings had really originated from a suburban block in Lamb St.
He said people would often discuss the lights when he would accompany his family on night picnics at Bargara.
"There I was, not saying anything," he said.
"That was the point, not to tell anyone."
Although times have changed, Mr Bock said he didn't think children would be any different these days.
"We were just kids having fun," he said.
"I guarantee there are kids doing it now."
Space station to pass over Wide Bay on Monday
ON MONDAY evening, the International Space Station will make a pass over the Wide Bay area.
It will be seen as a bright point of light travelling across the night sky at about the same speed as a jet liner.
It will rise above the horizon in the north west at 6.24pm and will pass almost overhead at 6.27pm.
A minute later, as it passes near the Southern Cross, it will quickly dim and disappear as it enters the Earth's shadow.
If you haven't seen a Space Station pass, this is a good opportunity as it is bright and right overhead.
Just look to the north east at 6.24 m and it will be very obvious, brighter than any other object in the sky apart from Venus which will be setting low in the west.
Don't be late as it is only in the sky for about four minutes.
There are currently six astronauts on board, three Russian, one Italian and two American.
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