Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact - Above Top Secret

Australian Air Force Intelligence people were all over the place. Rumors circulated blaming theSoviets for using the vast open spaces of Australia to develop scientific ideas far ahead of theAmericans. Why the Soviets could not conduct their secret testing in the vast open spaces of Siberiawas not disclosed. Neither was it revealed why the pilots of the super-secret communist weaponcould not resist the temptation to buzz the tractor of a twenty-seven-year-old banana grower in thecapitalist world.Fortunately, there were several natural explanations for the sighting or the nests, although only onehypothesis, suggested by a Sydney Sun-Herald reader on January 30, accounted for both. Hebelieved the outerspace panic in Queensland was caused by a "tall shy bird with a blue body and redmarkings on the head." It was either a type of brolga or a blue heron, but the man did not know thecorrect scientific name. Many times, as he wandered barefooted though the bush, he said, he hadseen the birds dancing, but they flew away at high speed before he could reach them: "They wouldresemble a vaporous blue cloud and would certainly make a whirring sound in flight."Unfortunately for this pretty and imaginative theory, it got no backing from biologists. Museumornithologist H. J. Disney thought the brolgas could not make circular depressions of symmetricaldesign. He was similarly skeptical about the "bald-headed coot theory" advanced by another man,Gooloogong resident Ken Adams. "I've never heard of this habit by the bird," Disney said.Researcher Donald Hanlon has pointed out that another explanation for the nests has been proposedlocally: they are the "playground of crocodiles in love." I fully share Hanlon's skepticism about thislast explanation, because it could hardly apply to the nests found in Ohio, which will be discussedin a moment, or to the damaged wheat field in Montsoreau. A Queensland resident, AlexBordujenko, who knows about the crocodiles, claims the reeds are too thick in Horseshoe Lagoonfor crocodiles to move through them.So here we are: dancing cranes are held responsible by some people for bending reeds that are sothick crocodiles, according to other people, cannot move through them. What really caused thedamage? Nobody knows.On his way home that Wednesday night, George Pedley decided he would tell no one about the"spaceship" in the swamp. He saw neither portholes nor antennae on the blue-gray object and nosign of life either inside or about it. Furthermore, he had always laughed at flying saucer stories.But then he met Albert Pennisi, the owner of Horseshoe Lagoon, and disclosed the sighting. He wasvery surprised when Pennisi believed him right away and told him he had been dreaming for a weekthat a flying saucer would land on his property. This last detail places the Queensland saucer nestsin the best tradition of the fairy-faith.The time: six months before the Queensland experience. The place: Delroy, Ohio. On June 28,1965, a farmer, John Stavano, heard a series of explosions. Two days later, he discovered a curiousformation on the ground. When analyzed, soil and wheat samples showed no evidence of anexplosion. Wheat plants seemed to have been sucked out of the ground, like the uprooted reeds inQueensland or the uprooted grass in a French landing of 1954 in Poncey.The Ohio incident was carefully investigated by local civilian researchers. A. Candusso and LarryMoyers accompanied by Gary Davis. They found the strange circular formation on Stavano's farm,which is situated on a high point. At the center of the ring was a circular depression about twentyeightinches in diameter. It was probed with a pinch bar, but only loose soil was found for a depth ofnine inches. Much of the wheat had been removed, roots and all, and clods of soil a few inches longhad been disturbed. The wheat was laid down like the spokes of a wheel; there was no swirlingeffects as in the Tully nests.If we turn from Australia and Ohio to England, we are faced with another incident. As reported inThe Flying Saucer Review by editor Waveney Girvan (September 1963):July 16, 1963, will long be remembered in the annals of British Ufology. Somethingappeared to have landed on farmer Roy Blanchard's field at the Manor Farm, Charlton,Wiltshire. The marks on the ground were first discovered by a farmworker, Reg Alexander.They overlapped a potato field and a barely field. The marks comprised a saucer-shaped