 |
 FOURTH AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UFO CONFERENCE 5 & 6 June 2004 Sydney, Australia Review and Summary by Sheryl Gottschall The Fourth Australian National UFO Conference was held on the 5th and 6th of June 2004 in Sydney, Australia. Most of the speakers were from Australia but it was also attended by Budd Hopkins and Leslie Keane from the USA. The first day started with a power point introduction of the conference speakers by Attila Kaldy, the emcee for the conference and president of the UFO Society of Western Sydney. The UFOSWS co-hosted the conference along with UFO Research NSW.  The first speaker on day one was Deb Payne from AURA in Adelaide who spoke on “The Australian Disclosure Project – What The Government Has On UFOs”. AURA has been consistently searching the Australian National Archives for official records of UFO incidents and placing them on a web page at http://disclosure.freewebpage.org. For the past year AURA has been searching the records of the RAAF, CSIRO, Dept of External Affairs, RAN, Dept of Supply (Woomera), DSTO, Bureau of Meteorology, the former Dept of Civil Aviation and have also come across various references to a nebulous group called “the committee” whose identity is still unknown.  Deb informed us that what you discover through searching the archives will depend largely on who you ask. If the staff have or develop an interest in the UFO subject they will tend to bring to your attention other information they have come across while helping with your initial request. One of the more interesting discoveries that emerged through AURAs search was the Australian governments involvement with a UN UFO study that drew on UFO reports from 133 countries. Deb gave an account of records of various sightings, investigations and projects, one of them being Project Moondust in 1961. This was set up to recover downed foreign space vehicles during the Korean War. She also reported a reference to four officers from Woomera who observed a cigar-shaped object with portholes and interior lighting moving faster than any objects they usually recognised. Again at Woomera on October 8, 1952 an object was detected to come within a mile of the base but remained unseen. Further records included a report in 1954 when a dark grey circular disk paced a Canberra bomber then flew above it while still keeping pace, then took off at high speed in excess of 3600mph. AURAs search has revealed that next to Woomera the most prolific spot for UFO incidents has been around the Milne Bay area in Papua New Guinea and Deb gave a list of sightings for just one year in that particular area. One of these included reports of several lights seen emerging from the water by twelve people from the Croker Island Mission and the HMAS Bass being sent to investigate. Another bit of interesting information to emerge from their search was the reference to Frederick Valentich, the Australian pilot who went missing over Bass Straight in 1977. The official record which Deb showed the audience stated that Valentich was “abducted”. This does not necessarily mean by aliens but an interesting statement nonetheless. Deb concluded her presentation with a plan by AURA to become politically active by lobbying the Australian government to reveal what they know in about two to three years. On a personal note, Deb Payne was new to conference speaking but you wouldn’t have known it as her presentation was extremely professional providing the audience with much information that had been gleaned in AURAs search. I enjoyed listening to Deb as she was a clear and concise speaker and I was impressed by the vast amount of material that AURA had searched through to date. I also recognised how her personal search through the archives had impacted on her as I have been through the same experience after speaking to many people reporting sightings and encounters over the years. It is not until one does their own research, and a lot of it, that the magnitude and truth of what we are dealing with truly touches us. I encourage Deb to continue to present information gleaned from AURAs search at conferences as it is extremely valuable in driving the message home that the existence of exra-terrestrials is far from the folkloric myths and legends that many want to believe it to be. It is very real and going on right under our own noses! The second speaker of the day was Rex Gilroy who spoke on “Aboriginal Abductions Past & Present”. Rex’s passion is usually focused on Australian Anthropology, a passion I do not share with Rex as I am more of a futurist, but I found this particular presentation to be very interesting as Rex covered the Australian aboriginal myths and legends.  As I sat listening to Rex speak of the many aboriginal myths relating to sky beings I was left pondering over just how old the UFO phenomenon might be. Rex spoke about the aboriginal myth of the Moon Man and Moon Woman who introduced new fishing and hunting techniques to them. Also the central western New South Wales myth of beings who descended to Earth on a fiery log and created the first two human beings. He also spoke of a myth from the Flinders Ranges area where two brothers came down from the sky and then surrounded themselves with fire before returning to the sky. Rex also informed us that the aboriginal people believe the Milky Way is inhabited by many tribes who ascend to earth to hunt and gather resources. Some were the Kaiara (sorry about the spelling) who descended and burnt the ground when they landed. (sound familiar?) Rex also told us that tribes people have reported being captured and taken to other worlds and he briefly mentioned a 1932 case in Charters Towers which he spoke about in greater detail at the 2003 National UFO conference After a break for lunch to digest all that information, I (Sheryl Gottschall) spoke on the subject of “Exploring Open Contact”. I have had a passion for this topic ever since I read George Adamski’s writing which planted the first seeds for this topic about 18 years ago. I began by briefly describing an open contact event to be that where our civilization would meet an extraterrestrial race and knowledge of this would be known by all of Earth’s population. (what we all dream about) There would be no cover-up but full acknowledgement of an ET presence here on Earth. Inherent in that open contact event would be the opportunity for equal exchange and opportunity for growth from the experience on the part of both parties.  The question of how we (humanity), both individually and collectively, would respond to such an event is something that we really don’t know the answer to until it happens. Of course this opens the flood gates to many questions such as whether humanity has a good track record of contact experiences with others of it’s own kind. If not then can we expect any better with an ET civilization? Of course, how we respond to open contact with ETs will depend largely on the type of contact we have whether it is malevolent, benevolent, expected or unexpected along with a host of other types. There is also the question of whether we should even try to make contact with an ET civilization considering we don’t know who or what we might be contacting. I further explored the idea of how we might expect an open contact event to come about and what the short term and long term effects on our world might be. I raised that many issues are shared by UFO disclosure and open contact which have the same end result – acceptance of a new world view complete with ETs. However, so far humanity has seemed to have had a problem facing the changes required of it to bring this new world view into being, denying the UFO phenomenon at every opportunity. One goal of this presentation was to ask the audience to become more conscious of it’s role in the UFO phenomenon. This is not something we really want to do, hence the lack of discussion about the implications of open contact with ETs within the UFO community, but I hope this changes soon. Following me was Budd Hopkins who spoke on the subject of his new book “Sight Unseen – Important New Abduction Cases”. Budd began with a foray into the annals of UFO history when in 1947 less than one percent of people thought UFOs were from extraterrestrial origins. He gave a tongue in cheek description of the evolution of the phenomenon from unoccupied spacecraft to vehicles that brought beings to Earth and whose occupants interacted with humans. Budd stated that although the Hill abduction case occurred in 1961 there were a large number of alien abductions reported before that in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. He went on to say that by 1975/76 abductions were quite distasteful being too close and too unknown and even though they were thought to be very rare Budd believed there were probably more abduction cases than UFO sightings reports.  Budd showed many images of scoop marks and scars found on people’s bodies after a reported abduction experience. Some of these looked to me more like wounds left from rough treatment rather than poking, prodding and sampling and I wondered if he would tell us more about how they came to appear but he never got around to it and I forgot to ask. Then Budd spoke about a case in Brisbane, Australia where a family visited a park they enjoyed going to regularly and took a series of photos while there. Photos were taken by the father of his wife and two children with the ocean in the background as well as a few trees. Soon they all felt quite funny and wanted to go home. The children did not want to return to the park even though they always enjoyed going there. Eventually they contacted Budd and the two adults had regressive hypnosis revealing that the mother and two children were taken up into an awaiting craft and the father was seemingly “frozen” in the position of photo taking. Once in the craft the mother had the feeling that she was separated from her children, then reunited and the three were returned to the ground. As the mother was coming back down to ground she saw her husband on the ground with the camera in his hand. When the husband had hypnosis he remembered seeing two small silver balls floating in the air. He was extremely upset as he remembered seeing them before and knew what it meant. To add to this, three of the photos in the middle of the colour film when developed were red in colour and devoid of all other colours, meaning the images of the trees and the ocean could be seen but they were all in shades of red only. The other odd point is that these three photos were supposed to be shots of the mother and the two children yet their images did not appear in the photographs while everything else in the shot was where it should be. From this it appear that they were invisible at the time the photos were taken. The father also had the strange feeling that he couldn’t be seen at the time. If invisibility is used to mask abduction experiences this could then explain why people report abductions occurring in broad daylight over cities yet no one witnesses them. All good mind fodder and I am looking forward to reading his book on this subject. Budd closed by making the statement that, “too often humans think they have figured ‘it’ all out when they are really only on the edge of it” and who can disagree with that? The last speaker for day one was Leslie Kean from the USA, author and journalist, whose presentation was entitled, “The Cover-up Of The Kecksburg USA UFO Crash Incident In 1965”. Although this was the title of Saturdays presentation Leslie really spoke about this more on Sunday. Saturday she mainly spoke about the media response to the UFO subject and how uneducated they are about UFOs. Leslie feels she can only write about UFOs from a scientific approach giving solid information to the readers otherwise there is too much opportunity for the “wink” factor to enter it’s domain. Leslie stated that the ridicule factor began with the Robertson Panel where official debunking was introduced in 1953.  She also stated that journalists depend on government reporting and develop resources within those governments so they do not want to risk breaking that connection. That is why journalists do not push the UFO subject. Another reason is that they do not have the time to study the subject having to meet daily deadlines. Therefore they remain quite uninformed on it. The media are also conditioned by society to leave it alone or add the “wink” factor to any story they might publish. Leslie felt that people in the UFO community were their own worst enemies and really did not understand what the media could and could not handle when passing on UFO information to it. She believes the media is often given too much of the “weird factor” and journalists anticipate the reaction by the public. Consequently they add the wink factor in their reporting so as to let the public know that, yes, they are telling the public this story but know how ridiculous it seems. (I guess they think this maintains their intelligence and reporting integrity). I have said things along similar lines to Leslie in the past and believe that we do have a product/idea to sell to people but we need to educate ourselves in knowing how to market it.  Duncan Roads, editor of Nexus Magazine, was the after dinner speaker who told me the next morning that he ended up speaking for three hours after dinner. I left the Saturday evening dinner after the first hour but I did hear Duncan’s run down of his personal history and how he came to be editor of Nexus. One of the statements Duncan made was that he is very skeptical of what society believes and questioned who the skeptics really are. If anything Duncan believes that UFO researchers are the true skeptics. He touched on many subjects in that first hour but by the end of the day I was quite tired so I headed back to the motel and had a deep sleep giving my subconscious time to percolate over everything I had heard that day. Sunday, and it was the second day of the conference. My subconscious had cleared some mind space overnight and I was off to the conference once again. The day started with Diane Harrison who spoke on “Australian UFO Footage & Photos of 2000 to 2004”. Diane began with a video presentation of the activities of AUFORN which was accompanied by well selected “spacey”, emotive music. I thought this would have been interesting for the newbies so they could get a peek in at what a UFO organisation actually does. Then Diane showed some photos of possible UFOs, many of which we were familiar with including the Maslin Beach photo taken in South Australia. This is when Deb Payne jumped in and informed the audience of a new witness to this incident that she had found. As far as I had known many researchers had considered this photo a fake so I will be interested to hear what else Deb uncovers in the future. With the video footage of the AUFORN activities taking up approximately half Diane’s allotted time and the extra time Deb spent speaking about the Maslin Beach photo, we did not have a lot of time to hear more from Diane herself. I hope Diane finds the time in the future to turn her graphic art skills towards doing some photographic analysis. It would be a great asset.   The next speaker was George Simpson who spoke on “UFO cases from Victoria”. George spoke about the Westall School Incident reported by a woman who as a young child, along with her classmates, rushed over to the window of their classroom to see a UFO rise from the paddock across the street from the school. An article about the incident appeared in the paper the next day. Goerge also briefly covered the Valentich case and spoke of a photo taken of an object over the ocean just 12 minutes before Valentich’s disappearance. George mentioned the case of Sue Sharples whose rear car window was sucked out by a UFO. Apparently her husband drove up and down the highway looking for the glass window believing what goes up must come down, but he never found it. The rest of the time George spoke about the pitfalls of digital photography and the easy ability to hoax digital photographs over that of regular films. I wasn’t sure I agreed with George on this but I am no expert on photographic analysis. After the first break Mary Rodwell spoke on “Contact & The Evidence For Star Children Genesis And Communications”. I had been looking forward to Mary’s presentation as much of my recent research ran parallel to her own. Although I am not a starchild advocate (at least until I see some DNA analysis) I have found that the individuals that both Mary and I interview and sometimes counsel share the same side effects from their close encounters. Mary began her presentation by defining abduction experiences as “non quantifiable and disturbing to people in some way”. After contact people change in the most profound ways which remains with them forever and Mary believes that experiencers are undergoing a “global awakening of the heart”. (not sure if this was a quote or her own words) Mary did go on to quote some experiencers thoughts but unfortunately this is about where I lost focus as the air-conditioning at the venue had failed on Sunday and I was feeling quite uncomfortable. Luckily Mary was selling her new video, “Expressions of ET Contact, A Communication & Healing Blueprint?” which I bought and have since viewed, and I recommend it to all serious researchers. This video explores reports of the development of healing abilities by close encounter experiencers including Adrian Dvir and others, as well as sketches of ETs by an anonymous British (?) artist that were encountered during contact. If you are looking for “hard” evidence on this video you won’t get it, but from a behavioural science perspective it is indeed intriguing and left me wondering what indeed was truly occurring to these people if not due to ET intervention. Perhaps understanding that might give us some more clues. This is a must see video and can be ordered by contacting Mary directly through her web site at www.maryrodwell.com. Following Mary was Bill Chalker whose presentation was entitled “Strange Odyssey – Researching The Impossible”. Bill began by taking us on a trek through a list of the physical evidence for UFOs then evidence of alien abduction experiences.  He quoted the Horseshoe Lagoon case which occurred in Tully in 1966, a case in Orange in NSW in 1977 where four marks were left on the ground and Bill’s thoughts on what he considers the best landing case in Australia to date that occurred in Rosedale in 1980 to name a few. Bill also spoke about an “outback Roswell” which I also heard from him at the 2003 conference. Apparently Bill has had communication with some aboriginal people about a possible UFO crash and I will be interested to see how this develops in time. As for alien abduction evidence Bill spoke about the very well known Peter Khoury case and the DNA analysis that was done on a possible alien hair left behind after Peter’s experience. Following Bill was Leslie Kean again. On Sunday Leslie spoke in depth about the Kecksburg Incident in Pennsylvania, USA in 1965 which involved the cover up of a UFO crash. Hundreds of witnesses described seeing an acorn-shaped fireball in the evening skies moving across four states, a controlled landing and the systematic military recovery of the object. Apparently members of the local community became quite divided over this incident with some even denying anything had actually occurred or that the military had even entered Kecksburg at the time. Two key witnesses came forward in the late 1980s, early 90s, to state that the object they had seen had had hieroglyphs on it. Leslie believes the Kecksburg case to be a very solid crash case that has been well documented. Leslie, along with others, have formed the Coalition for Freedom of Information (CFI) and in 2003 sent out a press release stating their intentions to bring a law suit against NASA in relation to the case. You can read more about this at www.freedomofinfo.org. The last speaker for Sunday was Budd Hopkins who spoke about “Abduction Phenomena, Subtle Symptoms Of Experience”. Budd’s first indicator that people have had an abduction experience is when they begin to think that maybe there is nothing to their experience after all because it was just all too crazy anyway. I wasn’t too sure whether I agreed with him on this point. The other indicators were problems sleeping, low self esteem, dissociation between themselves and their bodies, trust issues, symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), panic attacks, fears and phobias (dread of certain windows or doors), dislocations such as waking up in another part of the house, wearing wrong clothes or pyjamas, dreams that don’t seem like dreams but seem more real. Budd made the point that when people dream they don’t usually dream about their own bedrooms or see their room or house exactly the way it looks when they are awake. He also stated that dreams tend to be focused on your feelings and not being aware of walking in a mud puddle, or cutting your feet. Budd also stated that abductees tend to be more introverted and private, not particularly adept at sports, not robustly sexual, often reported psychic gifts, typically worked in the helping professions such as nurses, doctors, psychiatrists, worked with children. Budd had also found abductees to be writers, artists and musicians which I have also found to be true here in Australia. He believed that during or after an abduction experience “something” was switched on so that for a brief time of a few weeks individuals became telepathically connected to their family members. This eventually fades after a while. Budd was adamant that the transformation that people undergo during their experiences is not due to ETs but the benign intervention of other humans. He finished by giving the audience advice to leave well enough alone and not to bother looking into their experiences if their life was going okay. Mere curiosity was not enough of a good reason to go exploring. However, if people were considering looking into their experiences (and by this we were left to assume he meant via hypnosis) they should stop reading about the subject immediately. At the close of the day we all said our good-byes, took photos and went on our merry way exhausted, purged and yes, even invigorated about the future of the UFO subject. Some stayed on to attend a closed gathering for researchers with Budd Hopkins the next day and some of these went on a bus trip on the Tuesday up into the beautiful Blue Mountains. Unfortunately I can’t report on these as I had to return to work the next day and yes, back to the “unreal” world. Attending UFO conferences always stimulates me to start thinking about new topics and provide the opportunity for unfinished thoughts to crystalise and emerge during the following year. Conferences are a great way to catch up with people you haven’t seen for a while, get to know new people, put names to faces and gain an insight into how much can actually be achieved by volunteers through cooperation and sharing of our personal passion. UFO conferences are great and I plan to attend as many as I can in the future.     |
More about ACUFOS Publications Gravity Series Articles Close Encounter Support Services Latest News Free download of UFO QUEST Become a Member Email Us  |
