What happened
On April 6, 1966, at about 11 a.m., students and teachers at schools in Westall, in the suburbs of Melbourne, saw a silvery, flattened object that flew over the playing field and descended over a nearby wooded area known as The Grange. Some witnesses also saw small airplanes circling around it. Dozens of children ran toward the landing site; after a moment the object rose and flew off to the northwest. A circle of flattened vegetation was reportedly left on the grass. According to witnesses, military personnel and police arrived at the scene, and students were told to keep quiet about everything. The local press reported on the case, and in 2010 it became the subject of the documentary film “Westall ’66.”
Witnesses
More than 200 students and teachers from the primary and high schools in Westall, as well as local residents.
Explanations and hypotheses
The Australian authorities never offered an official explanation. In recent years, researchers Keith Basterfield and Shane Ryan have proposed that it was a balloon from the HIBAL program, launched from Mildura in the 1960s to measure radiation in the atmosphere, and that the circling airplanes may have belonged to the team tracking it. Some witnesses reject this hypothesis, pointing to the object’s rapid maneuvers and its landing.
Disputed A likely explanation exists, but some of the facts are still disputed.
More: Wikipedia (en)