Unexplained, unusual, bizarre: Queensland’s wildest UFO sightings
Take a look at the unusual objects spotted in the Queensland sky and decide for yourself - do aliens live among us. Meet Queensland’s most passionate believer who claims to have seen one, spending his life mapping out their journey.
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Have you spotted something unusual flying around in the sky recently?
UFOs have been a topic of discussion for years, especially in Queensland, with the latest sighting of a bright light white light flying through the air mentioned as recently as July 14.
And while the mysterious object was debunked to be the successful launch of India’s Chandrayaan-3 rocket to the Moon, there have been some more bizarre and unexplained occurrences of unidentified objects in recent years.
Gladstone local Anthony Goodall explores these stories of unusual sightings in his podcast Encounters Down Under, where he has interviewed more than 50 people around the country about their first hand encounters with aliens and UFOs.
Goodall’s curiosity about aliens and extraterrestrial beings started as a kid, but it wasn’t until 2015 while he was working at Blackwater Mine in Central Queensland when he began taking his UFOs more seriously.
“I was a little bit ‘how you going’ with the whole idea, the whole concept of people seeing these sort of things,” Goodall said.
“...it wasn’t until I had my own real experience back in 2015 when I saw these two strange lights fly around on top of me while I was at work.
“I thought it was two fighter jets to begin with, because it had no navigation lights or anything like that, and it was at night time...they were two orangey-red orbs with no noise, and usually you can hear a plane go over the top of you while you're at work.
“So I was like, what the hell where they? ... there was no noise, nothing. We had no idea.”
After Goodall and his colleagues struggled to identify the object at the Bowen Basin site, Goodall decided to take matters in his own hands.
“From there I started the Australian UFO Sightings page, to look more into it and start getting a bit more of an idea of people’s experienciences.” he said.
“Eventually down the track, I thought I wanted to start talking to people property and hearing their first hand encounters.
“That's where I got the idea to start up the podcast... it’s been an absolute blast talking to people”.
As well as hosting the Encounters Down Under podcast, Goodall is the founder of the Australian UFO Sightings Facebook group which gives its 36,000 members a platform to share their unusual sightings with one another, detailing the time, location and appearance of a potential UFO, often accompanied with videos and pictures.
In his six years running the Facebook group, Goodall emphasises how important it is to keep a critical and analytical mind when sharing personal stories of encounters.
“A lot of things can be easily misidentified,” Goodall said.
“It doesn't go and discredit anyone’s sightings or what not. People are still mistaking seeing Venus in the evening sky or seeing Starlink go across, thinking we’re being invaded by aliens or they might see the international space station fly over and not understand what they’re seeing.
“The best thing to do is help yourself by investigating and studying, or just getting an idea of your surroundings. Get a grasp of today's technologies these days that can elude you to immediately thinking it's a UFO.”
In the U.S., a historic congressional hearing took place on July 26, 2023 after a former intelligence official, David Grusch, made statements under oath that the Pentagon possessed bodies of crashed UFO pilots which he described as “non-human”.
With the shocking US testimony making headlines internationally, Goodall wants people to understand that telling stories of UFO encounters is still very stigmatised, but the reality is that there are things out there.
“Even if you are a non believer... give people the benefit of the doubt that they are actually experiencing something. “ he said.
“They’ve got nothing to gain, if anything, they’ve got more to lose than to gain in telling their story, they could lose their reputation.”
And for UFO enthusiasts, Goodall’s message is simple and clear “keep looking up”.
“Keep a critical and an analytical mind.” he said.
“As long as you keep things critical and try and remember the details, time, dates and locations and try and keep things in an investigative mindset of what you have experienced,
“It helps bring more credibility to your experience as well, therefore people cant just dismiss your encounter.”
Australia’s only UFO event, the Cardwell UFO Festival has been held in Queensland since 2014 and is about to celebrate its 10th year anniversary.
Taking place from August 10 to August 13, the festival is created especially for UFO enthusiasts, offering UFO sighting tours, alien themed parties and panels and forums with a number of guest speakers who have had close encounters with extraterrestrial beings.
Prepare yourself for the upcoming festival and check out some of the strangest potential UFO encounters in recent years in Queensland.
Have you had an encounter with the extra terrestrial? Tell us about your experience in the comments.
READ MORE: UFO SIGHTINGS IN FAR NORTH QUEENSLAND
JULY 14, 2023: REAL LIFE ‘DEATH STAR’ SPOTTED IN SKY
An Upper Coomera man was perplexed when he saw a bright light that looked like the “Death Star” in the Gold Coast skyline on July 7, 2023.
47-year-old Jarod Crook recorded the footage while we was walking to the pub along Old Coach Rd, when he saw there were no stars in the sky, but just a bright unusual object.
“It just looked like a star, but a very, very bright one. And the reason why I took a picture of it was because there were no other stars in the sky,” he said.
“ … And then when we take the picture that comes out, that circle with the three (rings) looks like the Death Star.
“ … I don’t know what it is. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve camped all my life but I’ve never seen anything like that.”
Mr Crook said he saw it again two days later, sitting lower in the sky, but had not seen it since.
Since the unusual object appeared, some people theorise it was an image of the Indian Chandrayaan-3 rocket, however the launch took place on July 14, with Mr Crook’s footage taken a week earlier on July 7.
As for the “Death Star”, there is still no clear answer about what the object is and where it came from.
APRIL, 2023: UFO SIGHTINGS AND DEAD COWS
In April 2023, two separate alleged alien encounters occurred just months within each other after a Cairns couple spotted a strange UFO-like object in a sunset picture and a pair of Mackay farmers documented unexplained and bizarre mutilation of their cows.
On April 3, 2023 Cairns-based Charles Budby and his wife took a photo of the sunset while they waited for their dinner at the Civic Shopping Centre car park on Sheridan St when Mrs Budby saw something unusual in the picture her husband had taken.
“I zoomed in and it’s not a plane or floating balloon, just something you can only see in the photo,” Mr Budby said.
“It was only 10 or 15 seconds when I looked back in the sky and couldn’t see anything,
“By the looks of it, it was travelling really fast. I don’t think a thousand people would‘ve seen it all at once. I thought it was a glitch in the sky.”
Six months earlier, two graziers from Eungella woke up to find one of their cows was mutilated in a bizarre manner, with the udder, cheek and tongue cleanly removed with no traces of blood or marks on the cow.
Judy and Mick Cook who run the 1100 cattle farm in Mackay have estimated losing 20 cows over 18 years in the same manner, with the cows organs removed with surgical precision and no blood.
“(Aliens are) the only explanation I have got.” said Judy, who also claims to have seen “a lot of” strange lights in the sky above their 14,600 hectare property.
“You get this light – it will jump up and go down, jump up and go down,” Judy said.
“Then fade away and become bright again, then fade away and come bright.”
UFO Research Queensland President Sheryl Gottschall said that their story matches reports of similar cattle mutilations in the United States where cattle were found with no sign of blood around them.
MARCH, 2023: TWO LIGHT SOURCES FLICKER AND CHANGE COLOUR
Video footage captured in March, 2023 in Cairns shows two unidentifiable sources of light that reportedly “changed colours but remained stationary”.
Sherry Bancombe, a Melbourne resident who was visiting her nephew in Manoora, spotted the flickering lights from 8pm on March 13 of this year, which didn’t move until 12am.
“They didn’t move. If they were stars, my question is why weren’t they moving.” Ms Bancombe said.
“They changed colour, blinked, turning blue, green and red then switched off, and then came back on. I ended up going to bed because it was getting a bit obsessive.
“On the web, people said they saw it until Townsville.”
The video footage, filmed on Ms Bancombe’s phone, shows the two light sources, in one video flickering, and in the other remaining still in an orange and green colour.
A local astronomer claims that the phenomenon is likely a close encounter between Jupiter and Venus in a “planetary conjunction”, however, some people are not convinced.
NOVEMBER, 2022: MYSTERIOUS OBJECT IN THE SKY
A mysterious object flying in the sky was a topic of discussion of Moreton Bay residents when a local posted a picture of the strange object in the North Lakes Community Facebook group.
Spotted over Rothwell, Morayfield, Caboolture and Delaneys Creek, Beau Haywood posted in the community group asking if anyone managed to figure out what the strange object was.
Mr Haywood described the object as a white light that moved slowly before falling to the ground.
Theories were floated about the object having to do with Elon Musk’s Starlink, or simply a drone or a plane.
SEPTEMBER, 2022: UFO OR LIGHT FIXTURE?
John Gordon was visiting his family on the Gold Coast in September 2022 when he spotted something strange out the window above the Q1 tower.
Mr Gordon said he was taking a picture of the view when he looked at the image later and saw what appeared to be a flying saucer in the Gold Coast sky.
However, many people were quick to point out what appeared to be a UFO, could potentially just be a reflection from a light fixture inside the room.
Mr Gordon denies these claims and points to a picture his niece took later that day of the same window, showing a dark solid object in the sky from a different angle.
JUNE, 2022: THE STRANGE ‘STRAND’ UFO SIGHTING
Swimmers at Tobruk Memorial Pool in Townsville were in for a shock when they looked up at the sky and saw a mysterious item flying in the air.
A regular swimmer at the pool, Jett, captured the footage on his phone, showing a bright white object moving in the sky like a “dot flying around”.
“Everyone was kind of just saying UFO UFO. Some people thought it was a drone but it was a bit sus [sic.] what was going on, you don’t want to sound crazy to say UFO,” he said.
“I haven’t really seen anything like it was definitely a bit weird.”
OCTOBER, 2021: PULSATING LIGHT IN BUNDABERG SKY
Experts became intrigued after a Bundaberg man, Brad Trotter, captured footage of a large, bright, “pulsating” object in the sky in October 2021, changing colour numerous times from green, white, orange and red.
During the time the video was unveiled, other locals claimed they also saw the object, coinciding with storm activity in the region.
Mary Rodwell, a UFO expert and author reviewed the footage and said “no doubt it’s a UFO, not a star”.
Ms Rodwell had previously told Bundaberg’s NewsMail in 2012 that there had been increased sightings of unexplained phenomena in Bundaberg, stating “There have been some people who have reported ‘missing time’ on the road between Rosedale and Bundaberg, where the trip has taken a lot longer than expected”.
JULY, 2021: TOWNSVILLE COUPLE SPOT UFO OVER THEIR BACKYARD
Kathy and Eddie Frey were sitting in the backyard of their Condon home in July 2021 when they were both startled by a bright ball of green light that shot across the sky from west to east.
The couple were out the back of their Townsville home at 7pm, Mrs Fey saying she couldn’t believe her eyes.
“It came down very quick for couple of seconds and then went back up. It seemed to shoot down right near where the towers are (on Mount Stuart), and then went straight back up to the height it arrived at,” she said.
“It went back a little bit slower, stopped, did a bit of a wobble, then shot off at the quick speed again.
“If my husband wasn’t sitting next to me I would have thought ‘you’re going nuts woman’.”
Both Mr and Mrs Fey said they’d also spotted an orange UFO in Cairns in 2016.
Mrs Fey was adamant that their latest sighting in 2021 was an unidentified flying object, claiming that where they live they get noisy planes flying over them all the time, but this was “totally silent”.
AUGUST, 2020: CLAIMS MAN’S UFO CRASHED INTO HIS DRONE
In August 2020, A Gold Coast man claimed to have footage of a UFO flying around bushlands in his suburb after his drone got hit by something and sent it hurtling to the ground.
After his drone was hit, losing a propeller in the process, George Csere reviewed the footage frame by frame and claims his device was hit by something large – a UFO.
Mr Csere was flying his drone 94 metres high when the incident occurred in which he says he saw a “car-sized object” in the sky.
“Under the spot where this object was spotted is a perfectly round waterhole with no algae,” said Mr Csere.
“Twenty seconds after this object was seen, an impact occurs with the drone. This was incredibly loud.
“During the fall there was two frames where the drone caught something curious. A round object can be seen leaving at a fast pace.”
Mr Csere, who calculated the UFO was moving at 1080km/hr, believes that there was a structure located underground, with the pond being the entrance.
His video of the encounter Drone vs Ufo on YouTube has now got more than 58k views.
JULY, 2019: UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECT IN MIDDLEMOUNT
Seen in the Middlemount sky over two consecutive days, an unidentified flying object “stumped” experts and locals who saw the white-grey object on July 28, 2019 near a mine site.
Les Marsden who recorded the video saw the object while working as a loader operator at the mine site.
“There were different theories on what it might be. We thought it could be a falling star or weather balloon,” said Mr Marsden.
“It was almost pulsing. I observed it for a little while and then it disappeared. And then the following day someone said, ‘It’s back’.
“Then, as I was filming it, it appeared to land in a clearing and I was blinking thinking, ‘Did I just see that’?”
Mr Marsden also said that “it’s the most bizarre thing” he’s ever seen.
MAY, 2019: WHAT’S THAT IN THE CLOUDS?
Like something from the 2023 sci-fi film Nope, a Cairns woman spotted a strange UFO-looking object in the clouds as she recorded the sunset while visiting the Tablelands.
Hovering above Lake Barrine, Jacqueline Raistrick’s video shows a curved object hovering above the lake on the Atherton Tablelands, with her voice heard in the background “What is it? It’s weird. It’s moving up. It’s getting longer.”
As the video goes on, the strange object begins to fade away.
Another voice in the video can be heard saying, “I swear, if it opens and a light comes shooting out, I’m, running”.
Want to see more? Take a look at our list of every Gold Coast UFO sighting from 2010 to 2020.
Originally published as Unexplained, unusual, bizarre: Queensland’s wildest UFO sightings
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