Young journalists are routinely told to ignore these calls, on the grounds that the guy on the other end is probably a nutter. Australian journalist Ross Coulthart – a past winner of the Gold Walkley Award – was certainly told to ignore them when he was a youngster.
“The default position for the mainstream media has long been to dismiss this stuff as crazy talk,” says Coulthart. As he explains, the only “evidence” that will convince the scientific community is “an actual, physical UFO … a live alien would be even better”.
Coulthart some years back decided to take a more serious look at UFOs (or UAPs, which stands for “unexplained aerial phenomenon). “Like most journalists, I am generally reluctant to believe in cover-ups or conspiracies. But I also believe that governments are not telling the public the full story,” he says. It’s also fun to go down a rabbit hole. And journalism is supposed to be fun, remember?
Coulthart has now produced an exciting new book, In Plain Sight. It’s a lively read and it’s great to see a first-class journalist bringing his skill to the topic. He covers all the well-known incidents, such as the sightings at Roswell, where he finds that the US government has given four different explanations for what was found in those New Mexico cow paddocks. “They definitely lied,” Coulthart says. “The big question is: why?”
Coulthart also looks at the Woomera Rocket Range, where, in 1954, radar is said to have detected a grey disc at 60,000 feet; and he reminds the reader that one of the “most-witnessed” UFO events took place in Australia. It’s known as the Westall sighting and these are the details: On April 6, 1966, 12-year-old schoolgirl Joy Clarke was sitting in a science class at Westall High School in Melbourne when another girl pushed the classroom door open and said: “There’s things in the sky!” The student body rushed on to the sports field. More than 100 students and teachers saw several craft. Some said they had their rims close together. At least three were moving at a flat hover. One girl jumped the school fence in pursuit of a craft heading towards the nearby bush. She would later say she felt the heat through her hand.
Coulthart has spoken to many of the eyewitnesses, and he has looked hard at some newer sightings, such as the “Tic Tac” event over the Pacific Ocean, at a midpoint between San Diego in the US and Ensenada, Mexico, in November 2004. The USS Nimitz – an “awesome symbol of US Navy might” – was buzzed that day by a Tic Tac-shaped object, which was captured on video and witnessed by many. The New York Times has done several reports, and interviewed witnesses, including senior Navy personnel. The Pentagon has confirmed that the footage is authentic; also, that they don’t know what it shows. You can see a video of the sighting on our website.
In 2011, then US president Barack Obama made a statement on behalf of the White House, saying: “The US government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet.”
And while that may be right, Coulthart says it’s now clear that the US government never stops looking for evidence of alien life, and takes the issue extremely seriously. Just last month, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in the US released an official report on UFO activity. Geeks around the globe sat up waiting and it seems like the report was worth the wait. It says the Pentagon has examined hundreds of reports of “unexplained aerial phenomena” over the past two decades, and at least 140 of these events remain unexplained. Some 21 appear to have attributes in common: they are capable of “positive lift” or “anti-gravity” movement (ie: are able to fly without any means of propulsion); they have “instantaneous acceleration”; and they travel at speeds beyond those of any known aircraft.
“The US government essentially has no explanation for nearly all of the scores of unidentified aerial phenomena reported over nearly two decades,” was how The Times put it
So they didn’t, in the end, rule out aliens!
Which doesn’t rule them in, either.
“So, what do I know after two years down the rabbit hole?” says Coulthart.
Well, let’s not answer the question for him. He’s devoted an enormous amount of time and energy to this project, and his new book, In Plain Sight, is the result of his efforts.
Are we alone? It’s hard to believe, given the scope and scale of the universe, and Coulthart won’t be alone in thinking that we’re not.
That said, I did like this line from Twitter, shortly after Jeff Bezos took flight in July: “What if UFOs are just billionaires from other planets?” Wouldn’t that be disappointing?
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Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro is among 13 authors longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize for fiction, for Klara and the Sun. It is the fourth Booker nomination for Ishiguro, who won in 1989 for The Remains of the Day.
Since we here at the Book Pages predicted the winner of the 2021 Wolfson History prize, and the 2021 Miles Franklin, you’re no doubt gagging to hear our prediction for the Booker. Well, Rachel Cusk’s Second Place (that’s the name of the book, not the medal she’ll be getting) is lovely; I also enjoyed Sunjeev Sahota’s China Room (reviewed by Malcolm Forbes for The Australian earlier this week); Maggie Shipstead’s Great Circle (look out for Helen Elliott’s great review on these pages, soon) and Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Powers’ Bewilderment (review by Diane Stubbings also coming soon), but our softest spot is for Francis Spufford’s Light Perpetual (that said, his 18th century New York novel Golden Hill didn’t even get shortlisted, so what would I know?) The longlisted books are:
A Passage North, Anuk Arudpragasam
Second Place, Rachel Cusk
The Promise, Damon Galgut
The Sweetness of Water, Nathan Harris
Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro
An Island, Karen Jennings
A Town Called Solace, Mary Lawson
No One is Talking About This, Patricia Lockwood
The Fortune Men, Nadifa Mohamed
Bewilderment, Richard Powers
China Room, Sunjeev Sahota
Great Circle, Maggie Shipstead
Light Perpetual, Francis Spufford
More Coverage
My husband’s mistress was a twirling roulette wheel
Tony was 14 years older than me, and he had already been married, and had children, but I loved the way his energy spilt out in all directions. As time went on, suspicion crept in.
At 90, I look back at my life in wonder
Doug Pleasance takes stock of his blessings – none greater than the fact his dad came home from the war.
Ask any old journo about the callers who tend to contact the newsroom late at night. They’re almost always men, and they almost always believe that their calls are being bugged by the CIA. They’re calling because they have “top secret” information about UFO or even alien activity the government is covering up.