Experts weigh in on Fraser Coast UFOs

Video of strange goings on in the sky above Maryborough and Hervey Bay have created a stir on social media and earned the region a spot in a national television series. We asked some experts to weigh in. SEE THE VIDEOS

Planets, drones, or UFOs?

The Fraser Coast has seen some interesting video posted to social media in the past few weeks, with sightings of abnormal objects floating in and around the sky.

Residents of Hervey Bay and Maryborough have both captured strange lights on their phones, some of them moving.

Earlier this week, Karen McLelland posted a video of a glowing orb above Maryborough at night “moving across the sky”.

The strange light in the night sky over Maryborough changed colour to a bright orange towards the end of the video. Video Credit: Karen McLelland

Justin Hughes, a self-employed painter from Hervey Bay, posted a video to a Hervey Bay community page last week of a “weird” phenomenon.

“I have been seeing numerous things I don’t have any answer too,” his post reads.

The video he filmed at Pt Vernon was of a glowing light moving to the left, before stopping and flashing.

“I don’t want to say it’s a UFO, but I’m pretty aware of what a satellite looks like in the sky, how it moves in one linear motion, and how it doesn’t change speeds,” Mr Hughes said.

“Some of the things that I’ve been seeing in the sky include groups of them moving together and one light might speed up to another and then drop back.”

Mr Hughes said he was “open-minded” to the idea of extraterrestrial visitors but also understood there could be another explanation for the lights.

University of Queensland teaching associate Dr Adam Dodds has been studying UFOs in a scholarly capacity since 1997 after encountering a “glowing white orb” when he was a child, and said this week the most likely explanation for Mr Hughes’ video was the planet Venus.

“The object in the video seems to me indistinguishable from Venus as seen in the night sky,” Dr Dodds said when shown the footage.

Despite this, Dr Dodds reminded people who did not believe in UFOs to open their minds.

“When thinking about the relationship between media, our beliefs about UFOs, and our perception, we should remember that we tend to see what we are expecting to see, which may not always be the same as what’s actually occurring in front of us.”

He also believes it is important that drones should not discount the credible footage of potential UFOs.

“The recent drone flap in parts of the US has demonstrated the extent to which expectation can shape perception,” he said.

“Although some of the many videos circulating online seem to depict anomalous aerial objects, many do not.”

Pt Vernon has had previous inexplicable sightings.

Among those is footage captured by Angeline Lowther, a former Hervey Bay and Bundaberg journalist, who went on to tell of her experience on the TV series Close Encounters Downunder.

A three-pronged object seen in the sky at Pt Vernon in 2019. Video Credit: Angeline Lowther

Ms Lowther’s video depicts two orb-like objects in the night sky and a distant red dot blinking into space.

Sheryl Gottschall of UFO Research Queensland said “the public want answers” on what these objects are, but admitted some “evidence” submitted to their database could be challenging to identify.

“We can’t stipulate what these UFOs are or their point of origin,” she said.

“What we can say is that UFOs have been consistently witnessed throughout history into modern times.

“The majority of footage submitted to our organisation has been white dots on black screens, and without more data it has been even more challenging to identify anything from their footage.”

Whatever these objects might be, Dr Dodds believes we are only getting closer to discovering the truth.

“I believe we are making progress in terms of acknowledging that something genuinely anomalous is occurring that represents a hitherto unknown form of nonhuman intelligence, based on the surge in collaborative work across academic, legislative, and military domains - especially in the United States,” he said.

“I’m not sure we will ever figure out the mystery, but the first step is to acknowledge the existence of the mystery.”

Originally published as Experts weigh in on Fraser Coast UFOs