Westall, Melbourne, Australia
37°57′S, 145°09′E — South-eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Victoria — Clayton South / Westall area
What's documented
Westall is a south-eastern suburb of Melbourne, Australia. On the morning of 6 April 1966, students and staff at Westall High School and the adjacent Westall State School observed a silver-grey disc-shaped object descend into a paddock at Grange Reserve, remain on the ground briefly, then ascend and depart. An estimated 200 witnesses were involved. The object reportedly left a circular impression in the grass, which was cordoned off the following day by men in suits. The case is one of the largest mass-witness daylight sightings in the Australian record.
Notable & intriguing
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An estimated 200 students, teachers, and Westall staff observed the 6 April 1966 incident across a period of approximately 20 minutes. Andrew Greenwood, the science teacher who organised the children, gave a contemporaneous on-camera ABC television interview the same day. The Royal Australian Air Force file on the case (NAA: A9755) is in the Australian National Archives.
ABC TV news footage, 6 April 1966; NAA series A9755, 'Westall incident'
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The 2010 documentary 'Westall '66' by Rosie Jones gathered ~40 witnesses, then in their late 50s. Multiple independent witnesses described being individually told by school authorities the following day not to discuss the event. The Department of Air's official file consists of a single page; the original ground-impression site report referenced in that page is missing.
Jones, 'Westall '66' (2010, documentary); NAA A9755 case file inventory
Public-record imagery
