Australia.Mt Hale · twelve objects and a white substance (Western Australia, 1961)

Around 8:20 am on Saturday 5 August 1961, John Lee-Steere of Mt Hale Station, about 70 miles west of Meekatharra in inland Western Australia, came over to the shearing shed and asked contractor Edwin Charles Payne, 37, to have a look at two objects in the sky. That afternoon Payne signed a statement before Constable A. J. Coyle: the objects were round, bright silver, about 2 feet in diameter as seen from the ground; they seemed to be at 8,000 to 10,000 feet, 'possibly higher', travelling fast, and each could be kept in sight for about two minutes. Their course appeared definite and there was no surface wind. In all they counted twelve objects, in pairs, the last at about 9:15. The objects gave off a white substance that took on various shapes as it fell to the ground; they followed it and Payne managed to pick some up: it was snow white, looked like a fine mesh and crumbled very easily. Besides Lee-Steere, Payne named as witnesses five shearers he employed, Rex McCausland, K. Bonshore, T. Sampey, D. Kennedy and Rick Donnelly, and added that some station hands had also seen the objects.

Payne called at the Meekatharra police station at about 1 pm. Coyle's report to Inspector Sunter, dated the same day, specifies that the course was from north to south, that the substance was caught by Payne and Lee-Steere, that Payne intended to return to Mt Hale to find more of it and preserve it somehow, and that the Department of Civil Aviation office at Meekatharra had no knowledge of the objects; since Payne was curious about their origin, Coyle suggested that perhaps inquiries could be made in Perth. The report's heading places the sighting between 8:30 and 9:15, while its body, like the statement, has the first pair appearing at about 8:20.

On Monday 7 August, RAAF Base Pearce sent the Department of Air a priority telex: twelve unidentified objects flying high in pairs had dropped a white substance, they had been seen by 13 citizens at Meekatharra, Lee-Steere among them, and neither the government meteorologist, nor Civil Aviation, nor the RAAF had an explanation. It asked whether the occurrence should be investigated; a handwritten note on the telex says that the duty officer at Pearce was asked to obtain more information. On 18 August, Wing Commander A. E. K. Bolleman forwarded the police copies to Canberra, remarking that they added little to the information already to hand. He also reported that the State Government Astronomer, named as 'Mr Spigel', saw no astronomical explanation and said it was not the usual characteristic of meteorites to travel in 'trains' and that, when they did, noise and trails were mostly present, and that the Civil Aviation official at Meekatharra reported no civil aircraft in the area and the RAAF was not operating over that territory.

The same 7 August, the Director of the Joint Intelligence Bureau in Melbourne sent his representative in Canberra message 469/61: 'Today's Melbourne Sun reports the sighting of twelve flying objects, which left a white trail of streamers which floated to the ground.' He asked him to request from the Directorate of Air Force Intelligence a copy of the report that, according to the paper, the RAAF would make. The reply, dated 30 August, was that Group Captain Davis, commanding Pearce, had said he did not intend to investigate the report, as he could do nothing more than the police had done. Both messages were filed in the Bureau's file that ten years later received O. H. Turner's minute.

Meanwhile, on 9 August, Harold J. Symonds, president of the Astronomical Society of Tasmania, wrote from Hobart to Constable Coyle, in a letter that referred back to an earlier one, because he had heard on the ABC news that the RAAF proposed to investigate. He suggested a simple solution: migrating spiders, so-called balloon spiders, which spin webs that the wind carries over long distances and which, seen in the right light, look like round, bright, high-flying objects. He argued that the witnesses could have been mistaken about height and speed, that small, highly reflective objects at about 200 feet on a light breeze would look much the same, and that it was very unlikely that a fast object would leave a trail that drifted down intact from 10,000 feet and yet was so fragile to the touch. He suggested checking the recent wind circulation, and himself warned that he had 'very little data to go on' and that his theory 'may not fit the facts of the case on the spot'. The Department of Air's official summary of sightings since 1960 recorded the Meekatharra event, dated in error 8 August, with the possible cause 'Probably migrating "balloon spiders"'.

The explanation rests on the case's only physical datum, the substance. A white, very fine mesh that falls slowly, takes on various shapes in the air and comes apart when touched is the usual description of the silk released by spiders that travel on the wind, and both Symonds and the RAAF start from there. Other details in the file fit that reading: the event happens early in the morning, with the sun low in the north-east (a calculation of its position for Mt Hale puts it about 18° high at 8:20 and about 28° at 9:15), that is, with the raking light that makes threads shine; the north-to-south course matches the northerly wind that Keith Basterfield's catalogue records for Meekatharra at 9 am, a figure that does not appear in the official papers; and neither the height nor the size the witnesses gave can be judged by eye when the distance is unknown, so small nearby objects and large high ones produce the same image. That Payne felt no wind on the ground does not rule out wind aloft.

The explanation is not a laboratory finding but an inference made at a desk, and the summary itself qualifies it with a 'probably'. There is no record that anyone from the RAAF went to Mt Hale: the Pearce commander decided not to investigate, and the RAAF and Bureau files do not record that a sample was taken, kept or analysed, although Payne said he would try to preserve some. Some features of the account are not fully covered, such as the witnesses seeing defined silvery objects, in pairs, six of them in almost an hour, moving fast. At the same time, the State astronomer ruled out an astronomical cause, the Civil Aviation official at Meekatharra reported no civil aircraft in the area and the RAAF was not flying there, which leaves few prosaic alternatives besides the biological one.

The case is also valuable for the path its papers took, which shows how the Australian system worked in 1961: a country policeman takes the statement, an RAAF base telexes Canberra and asks whether it should investigate, its commander decides not to, defence intelligence (the Joint Intelligence Bureau) asks for the report because it read about it in the newspaper, and the official list closes the case with a probable cause. In 1971 O. H. Turner criticised a list of identifications from 1960 to 1965, judging by its dates probably this one, for its unchecked attributions to Venus and meteors ↗; Turner neither names it nor discusses individual cases, and in this one the attribution is not astronomical and comes with an explicit hedge. It also belongs to the family of 'angel hair' cases, like the Florence stadium case of 1954 ↗, and this one has a statement signed the same day and a substance picked up by hand.