Little did I know growing up that there was more than just crust and mantel lying under the dense forest that carpeted our mountains. Could it be that our soaring escarpments and corrugated gorges so ‘magnificent’, as Charles Darwin exalted, was assigned UNESCO listed World Heritage protection for a wholly different reason to saving cute cuddly Koala Bears and the Giant Dragonfly? Were we made a place of global significance just and only because our wilderness was impenetrable and remote and stretched every which way forever? Is UNESCO behind a cover up of something so huge and secretive and sinister, that many a person has disappeared in the bush, searching to unveil the truth?
This month on March 22, 1976, my family and I spot an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO). It was so obviously not like anything we had ever seen before that my rational, agnostic father went so far as to register our experience formally with the Richmond Air Force Base, which was responsible for documenting Blue Mountains UFO sightings back then, as the military was during the Machiavellian decades of the Cold War. We were not the only people to spot UFO’s in the Blue Mountains. Our very own radio station, 2KA, reported sightings regularly. So many were seen that there is actually a Blue Mountains UFO Research Centre and Research Club which has recorded hundreds of sighting since the 1950’s.
Turns out, our mountains are a global UFO hotspot, a place where whole aircraft have mysteriously vanished, from where campers, bushwalkers, and soldiers have never returned, and where many an alien abduction has taken place. Some abductees have even survived to tell the tale.
| Triangle. By Mex and Heather Gilroy |
It all happens in the Blue Mountains Triangle, a Bermuda type vortex that spreads: from north of the Mountains through the Gulgong district; East to the Denman, Singleton and the Branxton-Maitland regions; southward to Goulburn; and northwards along the western side of the Southern Highlands, through to the Mulgoa-Penrith area.
Excited mountain folk have described seeing brightly glowing blue and green saucer-type airships, hexagonal forms, glowing red or green objects following them, saucer nests in forest clearings, large circular swamp pools, depressions of crushed reeds, ionized blue glows, balls of glowing white light, football shaped craft, flashing strong beams of lights, silvery egg shapes, domed metallic objects, eerie orange blinding glows, a force, and a “giant-size upturned saucer with a row of windows around its base, standing upon three tripod-type legs with large square plates at their base, and silver in colour”. They also reported hearing humming and whirring sounds, underground vibrations and excavation type noises while feeling faint frequency emissions and infrasonic sound that subsequently caused abnormal behaviour patterns including 'double vision, sleep paralysis, phobia, lethargy and nausea'.
| Kanangra Walls. Photo: NSW National Parks |
In this Triangle and sometimes out of it, UFOs and aliens have been encountered around Narrow Neck Plateau, Oberon, Denman , Putty Road (especially between Windsor and Singleton), Ruined Castle, Mount Solitary, Wild Dog Mountains, Lake Burragorang, Echo Point Cliffs, Wollongambie, Kanangra Walls, the National Parks of Kanangra Boyd, Wollemi, and Kurrajong, Kings Tableland, Warragamba township, Cowra, Murphey’s Glen and the Valleys of Grosse, Kedumba, Burrajong, Jaimeson, Megalong, and Hartley. Some of these places are so synonymously onomatopoeic with the likelihood of bumping into a UFO there, that they were surely named by aliens themselves!
The Blue Mountains UFO Centre has documented many extraterrestrial experiences, like this one:
The Blue Mountains UFO Centre has documented many extraterrestrial experiences, like this one:
“In November 1973, Mrs Janice Warren and her daughter Paula, while holidaying with friends on a farm located about half way between Gulgong and Mudgee, were out walking in the hills one afternoon, when they saw through trees, a large silvery egg-shaped object resting on the ground in an open area. The two women approached the strange object wondering what it really was. “We stood within 12 feet of the ‘big egg’ discussing it for barely a couple of minutes before it began emitting a throb, throb, throbbing noise which, beginning at a low volume, rose in intensity”.
And at Ruined Castle campers reported:
“Strange white glowing humanoid figures’ were seen moving about in the forest depths…... One young couple asleep in their tent on another night, were woken up by a bright, silvery glow that enveloped their two-man tent. Thinking it to be the torches of other campers that might have made their way along the Ruined Castle track in the dark, the couple emerged to see a 1.8m tall, human-like glowing form”… "It immediately strode up to the woman, appeared to grasp her with both its arms, then pass right through her. At this point she fainted, while before her shocked male companion the human-light form appeared to fade away to nothing!"
"The time was around 9am, when, partly hidden in the trees in a gully below the forest track, they spotted a large metallic silver object. Climbing down through the ferns and vines, they realised that it was a dome shaped object about 8-10m high and at least 20m in width, and that it had crushed trees and foliage as it came to rest on the forest floor. They experienced a ‘memory blank’ which completely blanked out their knowledge of everything that happened to them between the time that they saw the craft until they reached the top of the Plateau. Looking at their watches upon reaching the Plateau, they found that their walk from the spot where they had seen the craft had taken them 1 hour and 20 minutes".
These close encounters had nothing to do with the hallucinogenic drugs, homebrews and serapax, that had exploded into the Mountains by the 70’s, or anyone’s rich, vivid and mischievous imagination, or even anything to do with the military base everyone was reporting UFO sightings to, since they told us what we were seeing was either the planet Venus, meteorites, weather balloons, marsh gas, migrating ducks, or satellites - and who would
disbelieve the military? The underground construction noise heard by so many in the Burragorang region were just earth burps, of course, and the mysterious lights of an entire "phantom city” seen out on the far end of Kings Tableland late at night were obviously just the big fat butts of Blue Mountain Fire Flies – pretty enormous butts, HUGE, like our Giant Dragon Flies - the third biggest in the world - and lots of them. There must have been lots, to look like a distant lit up city.
The real truth is that since way before I was a schoolgirl, aliens have been living “under the cover” of our quartzite landscape so tectonically rolled and folded and rolled and folded, that the resulting shale, siltstone and mudstone puffed up like a giant croissant, providing perfect hiding places for extraterrestrials who based themselves right here –in the bowels of the Blue Mountains Triangle. While we going to school worrying about what testosterone charged boys might do to us, there were much worse and creepier things being done to our fellow mountain folk by not just one race of aliens, but several of them!
| Burragorang. Photo: NSW National Parks |
The real truth is that since way before I was a schoolgirl, aliens have been living “under the cover” of our quartzite landscape so tectonically rolled and folded and rolled and folded, that the resulting shale, siltstone and mudstone puffed up like a giant croissant, providing perfect hiding places for extraterrestrials who based themselves right here –in the bowels of the Blue Mountains Triangle. While we going to school worrying about what testosterone charged boys might do to us, there were much worse and creepier things being done to our fellow mountain folk by not just one race of aliens, but several of them!
| Narrow Neck Plateau. Photo: Peter Woodard |
Oh my goodness! Eat your hearts out Surfies! We didn’t have sandy beaches and rolling waves, long blond hair, peeling noses, suntans and surf boards, but we had VIP aliens, and the CIA! UFOlogists knew this was going on not just because they said so, but because campers staying out at the far end of Narrow Neck claimed to have heard loud drilling and machinery noise grinding away beneath them, and blasting sounds coming from somewhere below cliffs, and because campers have seen Australian and US military personnel stalking the bush, and have stumbled across barbed wire fences guarded by men in camouflage, and they have even been chased away and fired upon by them.
But this isn't all. A top secret space shuttle program has been in operation for years! Our Blue Mountains UFOlogists believe there is "a monstrous space station containing not only living quarters for scientists and other workers, but equipped with everything necessary to construct and launch spacecraft to the Moon and Mars, with building materials transported to this giant space station regularly from the Blue Mountains". We can’t see the space station though, because our fantabulous Australian military use 'time window travel' to zip intergalactically in and out in amazingly short periods of time – none of this seven month, one way ticket to Mars business.
Real UFO in the Blue Mountains
We Blue Mountaineers were the chosen ones. Superior aliens shared this ultra sophisticated science with us because we Aussies once sent out a friendly enquiry to the universe: “Gaday Mate, where the bloody hell are you?” “Here we bloody well are”, said the Aliens, “In the Blue Mountains”!! This is why we keep importing more people to Australia than the Department of Immigration lets on, because we are actually dispatching them - rather than ourselves, just incase something goes wrong – "to our invisible outer space ships, then further afield into outer space colonies".
And why wouldn’t we believe this? The military are always up to no good, conspiring away to develop the latest nasty thing to destroy humanity en masse - like the atom bomb, kept secret for years until it turned up in Hiroshima and Nagasaki one day. Apparently this alien technology will be super useful in the very near future as we hurtle towards the end of the world when humans are 10 billion on earth and we have run out of food and resources - and phosphate rock - and the culling begins: “Time itself could be manipulated by placing military bases in another time zone, making them invisible to an enemy" say our UFOlogists.
This top secret underground advanced space technology base is so top secret that when I asked Media Operations at the Australian Department of Defense Force, in writing, if the Burrajong Valley was ever a no fly zone; if there are any joint US-Australian bases in the Blue Mountains; do Australian special forces conduct military training in the mountains, by themselves or with a US counterpart; is there a "Top Secret Underground Advanced Space Technology Base, being operated jointly by the Australian and American governments”; and just what was General Douglas MacArthur doing in the Blue Mountains anyway, loitering in the Hydro Majestic Hotel pretending to be an American tourist? I got this response: “As per our email dated February 27, 2015 the Air Force is not responsible for the investigation and reporting of UFO sightings, please contact the National Archives of Australia for further information/assistance”. I guess they didn't take me seriously. Or they are hiding something.......Something like this:
| Real US 'Flying Saucer |
There used to be museum dedicated to UFO sightings in Katoomba – the Echo Point Museum. On display were newspaper reports, illustrations and photos of local sightings of UFOs, and even of Yowies, so that when visitors stood at Echo Point Lookout and gazed out onto the low hanging clouds and mist enshrouded mountains, it wouldn’t have been hard to imagine a giant flying saucer emerging from its vaporous valleys and zipping off into the horizon.
| Photo: NSW Department of Environment |
Although the Blue Mountains UFO Society still documents the occasional sighting, UFO’s are hardly seen anymore, much like our green tree frogs and bumble bees. We must have scared the aliens off by the speed at which Sydney spread out west, cementing fertile food producing flood plains all the way up to mountain foothills.
A year later Project Sign was established to investigate UFO sightings. After all, God created man; the Bible said nothing about creating aliens as well. So surely it was Russians, or some other enemy, sending strange looking objects around the globe. Project Sign became Project Grudge which in 1952 became Project Blue Book, the longest running enquiry into UFO’s in the USA. It compiled reports of more than 12,000 sightings of events up to 1969, each of which was ultimately classified as identified - with a known astronomical, atmospheric, or human-caused explanation - or unidentified, which made up about 6% of all sightings. But the world, especially the US, Canada, and Australia, had become obsessed with UFO’s, prompting the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to establish their own enquiry. The Robertson Report also concluded that 90% of the sightings could be easily attributed to astronomical and meteorological phenomena, like bright planets and stars, meteors, auroras, ion clouds, or to such earthly objects as aircraft, balloons, birds, and searchlights. They too decided there was no evidence to support the ETH. Keeping parts of the Report classified for 27 years however did little to dispel conspiracy theories.
A second committee was set up in 1966 at the request of the American Air Force, to have another look at more curious material gathered by the Project Blue Book. Their Condon Report, an investigation overseen by 37 scientists, also came to the same conclusion as previous investigations. Since ETH has been debunked, so too has alien abductions. The sense of having been kidnapped by something not human is probably 'sleep paralysis', a state during which sleepers experience temporary immobility and a belief that they are being watched. Some scientists and engineers have not given up hope though. In the US, the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) and the Mutual UFO Network, continue to investigate the phenomenon in the US, while the search for extraterrestrial intelligence continues in a scientific manner at various universities and institutes around the world. In Australia UFO research and reporting is maintained by passionate and undeterred volunteers covering 'hot spots' around the country.
When I tried to track down our 1976 UFO report with the Richmond Air Force Base I was advised that the documents had been transferred to the Australian National Archives, which has been unable to locate the report at the time of publication of this post. They assure me however, that they are still searching. Back then, Richmond Air Force personnel told us we had seen a satellite. Dad felt foolish and had a good giggle. But I was not convinced. I knew what I saw, and I knew, deep down in my imaginative 14 year old heart, that the aliens were out there ….. somewhere…..
Right under us, as it turned out.
Like Australia, Argentina is breathtakingly beautiful with Megdiverse Country status, giving it the responsibility of looking after a lot of very special and unique plants and animals, for the benefit of not just themselves, but the rest of the planet, for ever. Argentina covers 15 continental
Peron's policies aroused extreme hatred among the economic elite who didn’t appreciate improved working conditions of the poor, preferring to treat their workers as servants, calling them “little black heads” and “greasy” ( as in under their laboring nails). Giving the poor majority the right to vote was called a "zoological flood". Upper-class students chanted "No to cheap shoe dictatorship”. While Evita was dying of cancer, walls were graffiti with "Long live cancer!" When the Catholic church refused to Canonise Evita, Juan Peron threatened the separation of church and state, and ended religious instruction in schools. He also planned to legalise divorce and prostitution. In June 1955, Perón had two Catholic priests deported to Italy, triggering an attempted assassination by the Argentinian Navy which dropped bombs that killed 350 people, but not Juan Peron.
Video: Documentary Aliens Exist On The Moon The Truth Exposed 2015
The World in March 1976 - Argentina's Dirty War
This month in March1976 in the ‘Silver’ country of Argentina, a woman is arrested and exiled just 8 months after she, Isabela Peron, became the world’s first woman head of state. The last 114 years of Argentina is a cautionary tale: in 1908 it was the 7th wealthiest country in the world, ahead of Australia. Buenos Aires, its capital, was considered the most elegant European of cities on the right side of the global map. By the 1980’s, following decade after decade of military right wing rule, and more than ten years of horrific torture, terrorism and utter barbarism - with a helping hand from Uncle Sam and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) - Argentina was reduced to a near developing nation, billions of dollars in debt and still rioting today over the escalating cost of living.
Australia has lot in common with Argentina, apart from starting with the letter A. It’s the 8th largest country in the world (Australia is 6th). Like Australia, Argentina is rich in natural resources. The majority of its' highly literate population – thanks to free and secular education - lives on the coast. It is a country built by immigrants of European decent mostly, with a similar ethnic profile to Australia. Its’ once thriving arts, science and technology sectors, and diverse economy with a high manufacturing base, made Argentina a cultural and economic hub in Latin America.
| Magellanic Penguin |
| Coati |
zones, 3 oceanic zones and the Antarctic region. It is home to 9,000 vascular plant species (30% endemics) 2,380 vertebrate species of which there are 38 endemic species of mammals, and 19 endemic species of birds. From this total, 529 species of vertebrates and at least 240 plants are threatened or face extinction by the usual: human over population and greed destroying their habitat, deforestation and toxic contamination by human industrial activities.
Although the Spanish first arrived 1502, Argentina wasn’t established as a formal Spanish colony until 1776 after which a 43 year struggle for independence, and an extended civil war ensued between Centralists and Federalists, finally ending in 1861. From then on, a massive wave of European immigration, second only to the United States, turned the Argentina into one of the wealthiest nations in the world; among the top five exporters of wheat and beef.
Argentina might have been rich by the turn of the 20th Century, but the majority of its population was poor, with few rights. It wasn’t until male universal suffrage was introduced in 1912 that parties formed to challenge the status quo with the Radical Civic Union winning the 1916 election, enacting inaugural social, economic and agricultural reform. Fourteen years later of too much sharing for the likes of the ruling class, Felix Uburu seized back power in the first of many military coups that would characterise and cripple modern Argentina for the rest of the century. There were so many coups its almost comical, were the consequences not so tragic.
On the back of a 1943 Coup rose Juan Domingo Peron, a socially minded man who, during his tenure as Minister for Welfare, enacted laws in favour of workers, making him immensely popular among them. Too popular: he was arbitrarily jailed for being so appreciated but was released shortly after by a mass demonstration of the type Latin America does so well, and he went on to become El Presidente. Peron nationalised strategic industries and services, improved wages and working conditions, paid the full external debt and almost secured full employment. Embellished accounts of history judge his success more through the influence his famous wife Eva of “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” fame, which is how I first heard of her at 15 years of age, through this beautiful, sorrowful song about a country and a young dying woman, both in pain.
Video: Julie Convington's "Dont Cry for Me Argentina
Evita, as she was known, successfully pushed for the right of women to vote, and prompted social reforms on a scale never seen in Argentina before say her historians. Others, who have documented Juan Peron’s life, insist on pointing out that Juan Peron was doing the women he married a favour and giving them respectability by marrying them. However, Juan Peron is the only Argentine President accompanied by the First Lady ( Eva) in an official portrait, and photos of them together clearly indicate affection and synergy. Evita tragically died of cervical cancer at the age of 33, seven years into the Peron Presidency and just before another election. Peron was re-elected but he lost the allure and hold on the Argentine population that Evita had because not everyone loved Juan Peron. His acts and policies often seemed contradictory –right and left at the same time. He wanted both the USSR and the US as friends and neither as enemy – his 'Third Way'. While Argentina was open door to Nazi criminals after World War2, Peron also oversaw the development of the largest colony of Jews in all Latin America. He was disconcerting ideologues left and right because he wasn’t particularly ideological. But he was consistent about one thing – getting rid of the opposition on any side.
| Plaza de Mayo. Failed Coup Attempt |
