Australia has a long history of encounters with unexplained aerial objects, stretching from indigenous stories to modern mysteries. Are they aliens? Top-secret man-made machines? And why is discussion of UFOs seen as the preserve of crackpots and conspiracists? Celebrated journalist ROSS COULTHART probes the phenomenon both Down Under and overseas in his new book In Plain Sight – and in this edited extract demonstrates why it can be such a chilling topic.
About 2.30 on a pitch-black morning on Australia’s remote North West Cape, Annie Farinaccio walked out of a late-night party at the United States Naval Communication Station Harold E Holt.
It was late 1991, shortly before the US was due to hand over the site to Australia. The handover was happening amid mounting concern about the base’s covert role as one of the cornerstones of America’s submarine-launched nuclear missile defence. In the event of nuclear war, launch orders from the US would be sent out by the station’s powerful transmitters to submarines across the adjacent Indian Ocean. Exmouth locals had no idea their sleepy town would likely be obliterated in a nuclear exchange; they just valued what the “Yanks” brought to the local economy in this isolated community and were sad to be seeing them go.
The party at the base that night was to farewell some American friends who were returning home because of the handover. But Annie had stayed too late and now, she realised, she had no way of getting home – the few local taxis in this remote part of Australia had stopped for the night. So when two Australian Federal Protective Service police officers, who she knew as Kevin and Alan, kindly offered to give her a ride back into Exmouth, 5km south, she gratefully accepted.
Legends & Lore 