The 1966 Westall High School UAP Encounter: Australian National Archives and Meteorological Records

The Morning of April 6, 1966

At approximately 11:00 AM on April 6, 1966, students and staff at Westall High School in Clayton South, Victoria, were outside for morning recess when they observed a gray, saucer-shaped craft descending toward a nearby area of wild grass known as The Grange. The object, described as having a slight purple hue and being about the size of two family cars, hovered above the paddock before landing. The sighting lasted for over twenty minutes, during which time a second and third craft were reportedly seen. According to witness accounts, five light aircraft eventually arrived and attempted to circle the objects, which then accelerated vertically and vanished.

The Military and Police Response

Following the departure of the objects, students rushed to the landing site, where they found a large circle of flattened grass with a scorched perimeter. Within hours, the site was cordoned off by Australian Army personnel and local police. Witnesses reported that the military conducted soil samples and instructed students and faculty not to speak about what they had seen. Science teacher Andrew Greenwood, who had a clear view of the event, later testified that he was visited by officials who pressured him to remain silent. The Australian Department of Air was tasked with investigating the incident, but their official report was not released to the public for decades.

Declassified National Archives Files

In recent years, researchers located declassified files within the National Archives of Australia (NAA) that shed light on the government's internal reaction. File A703, 580/1/1 Part 1, contains correspondence regarding unidentified aerial sightings in the Victoria region during 1966. While the Westall case is not fully explained in these files, the records indicate a high level of concern within the RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force) intelligence branch. Some theories suggested the objects were part of the HIBAL program—high-altitude balloons used for radiation monitoring—but the flight logs for the day did not support a launch in the Westall vicinity.

Scientific Re-evaluation

The Westall encounter remains Australia's most significant mass UAP sighting due to the volume of witnesses and the consistency of their descriptions. In 2014, a witness produced a photograph purportedly taken during the event, though its authenticity remains a subject of debate. The Westall incident continues to be studied by sociologists and UAP researchers as a primary example of an unexplained encounter involving a large, credible witness pool and a subsequent institutional cover-up.