Melbourne

Westall and Two Hundred Schoolchildren

On the morning of 6 April 1966 pupils and teachers at two schools in the Melbourne suburb of Westall — between two and three hundred people by various counts — watched a grey-silver disc cross the sports field, drop behind the trees by the grasslands, and lift away a few minutes later. It is the largest sighting by number of witnesses in Australian history. The pupils were assembled that day and told not to discuss it; several of them said for decades afterwards that men in uniform had come to the field. Explanations from a weather balloon to a test aircraft have been offered. In 2013 a playground shaped like a flying saucer was built in the park where it came down.