"That strange aircraft is hovering on top of me again .. it is hovering and it's not an aircraft".
These were the last words ever spoken by 20 year old Frederick Valentich, the young pilot at the centre of Australia's most enduring UFO mystery.
In the early evening on October 21, 1978, Valentich left Melbourne's Moorabbin airport for a flight to King Island in Bass
Strait, the remote and tempestuous stretch of ocean separating the Australian mainland from the island of Tasmania. Piloting a single engined Cessna 182 L, Valentich was flying just off the coast, at Cape Otway near the
Great Ocean Road, when he and his aircraft disappeared forever. The voice recording of Valentich's exchange with Melbourne Flight Service Control in the moments just before his disappearance makes it clear he believed he was being followed by a UFO.
Valentich asked the flight service officer if there were any military aircraft in the area. Then he described a large object which was "playing some sort of game .... it seems like it's stationary .... and ... is just orbiting on top of me, also it's got a green light and sort of metallic like it's shiny on the outside".
No trace of Valentich or his Cessna has ever been found, despite an extensive air and sea search in the days following the disappearance. The mystery remains and no-one has yet satisfactorily explained away the theory that Valentich met with foul play at the hands of extraterrestrials.
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| Cape Otway - Valentich disappeared just off the coast from here. |
You might wonder why in this week's blog post I have abandoned our
North American road and cycle trip to return to Australia and write about a UFO mystery in Bass Strait. The answer is that David and I have been watching a television drama series called
The Kettering Incident. The plot revolves around the disappearance, 15 years apart, of two young girls from a remote community in Tasmania. In the opening scenes we see an old newspaper clipping of the Valentich disappearance. In episode 3 the exchange between Valentich and the flight service officer mysteriously comes over the radio in a car driven by Anna, the main character, and more than one of the characters sees strange lights in the sky.
We haven't watched the final episode yet but the suggestion so far is something unexplained and other worldly happened to the girls who disappeared. The references to Valentich's disappearance are not explained. Perhaps the film maker thought the incident was sufficiently notorious that it did not warrant an explanation. However many viewers will have never heard of Valentich - I only have because we came across a plaque commemorating his disappearance on one of our road trips along the
Great Ocean Road.
If, like us, you are watching The Kettering Incident, now you know what the references to Valentich mean. If not, you have learnt a little bit about the sad disappearance of a young man in the sky above the wild waters of Bass Strait - Australia's own 'Bermuda Triangle'.
Do you believe in UFOs?
Next week I promise to return to the US and continue my series on our road and cycling trip with a post on the enchanting Chanticleer Gardens just outside Philadelphia. Look for the post next Thursday or Friday, depending on your time zone.
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