There appears to be a surge of UFO activity in our neck of the woods, writes Bulletin columnist Paul Weston
THERE appears to be a surge of UFO activity in our neck of the woods, writes Bulletin columnist Paul Weston.
Opinion
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“LOOK at that white light that’s belting across the sky, it’s like a big star,” my mate says.
He is staring southwest towards the hinterland at dusk, pointing with his left hand, holding his first glass of wine in the other.
Smoke is rising from the flue on the outdoor pizza oven with the wood beginning to crackle, and only the commentary on the NRL live finals games can be heard, from the television inside.
As the smoke clears, we follow his pointing hand to a blinking light among the stars which moves rapidly west, lit up by the last of the sun before it settles behind the ranges.
My mate’s phone starts to beep. “I’ve got a NASA alert. When the International Space Ship Station goes over, they send me a message,” he says.
There is a brief silence, and more smoke clears. “Okay, I’m a nerd,” he says.
Close encounters with NASA nerds and of a Gold Coast hinterland kind are becoming increasingly common.
On August 24, just before midnight, a Carrara woman alerted UFO Research Queensland Inc about “six white oval objects” in the sky.
On August 12, at Oxenford, a resident sent photographs of a “green object near the moon”.
Six days earlier at Coombabah, seven witnesses leaving an Indian restaurant noticed something green. It was not the curry.
Two lights, “one large, one small”, were in the night sky heading towards Surfers Paradise.
UFO Research Queensland’s Sheryl Gottshall respects healthy scepticism, acknowledges the appearances of more drones in the sky which can account for the number of sightings.
The group’s Facebook page is attracting an increasing audience with 890 “likes”, and recent posts show UFO sightings have skyrocketed with most of them from our region.
“People are travelling through, they’re holidaying, they’re staying in multistorey buildings. They’re out and about and looking at the sky,” Ms Gottshall says.
She admits most of the footage sent to herself and her husband Martin is difficult to discern.
Asked if she has had a “close encounter”, she replies: “I was at Mount Gravatt in Brisbane in 1990. It was in the early hours of the morning and I awoke to see three small beings standing beside my bed.
“They were your typical (sightings) … three-and-a-half feet, very emaciated, pear-shaped heads, large dark eyes. They just looked at me.”
What was her response? “I was horrified, of course. I pulled the sheets over my head and prayed myself to sleep.”
Returning to the Coast skyline, our visiting NASA nerd continues tracking the space station, children are cheering, small heads are raised to the heavens.
Inside on the TV, Jamie Soward has just kicked a field goal in a fairy tale football moment allowing Penrith to proceed in the finals series.
But we are all outside, mobile telephones at the ready, watching the night sky.
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