UPA Ep-14 The Bass Strait Triangle. Tomb of the Missing

Join Ben as he examines the mysterious body of water between Tasmania and the main land, known as Bass Strait. There have been countless UFO sightings in this vast area. Both planes and ships have disappeared in clear weather. What lies beneath the waves in the Strait? What haunts the skies above? This is we’re Fred Valentich disappeared 21st October, 1978. Others have gone missing too.. Let’s board our virtu-plane and join the search.. for the missing people of Bass Strait!

Episode Transcript

(00:32):
Australia, the sixth largest country onEarth, an ancient, rugged and unforgiving
land with abundant animal life, bothbeautiful and deadly found within its all inspiring

(00:57):
landscapes and natural beauty. Exists adeep history of unexplained mysteries for anyone with
the courage to investigate them. Tonightwe joined Ben on a journey across this

(01:19):
vast island continent in search of answersto events that have reshaped the lives of
so many that have been exposed toUnexplained Phenomena Australia with your host Ben Hurled.

(01:52):
Good evening and welcome to Unexplained PhenomenaAustralia. We're back for episode fourteen.
And during the way I was thinkingabout what could I actually talk about
this week. I gave it somethought and I come up with the idea
of looking at the Bass Straight triangle. Yes, that's right, the bass

(02:15):
Straight triangle, similar to the Bermutertriangle. But this is here in Australia,
and Bass Straight, like the bermunTriangle, has some very very strange
activity that has occurred there over avery long time, and in aviation circles

(02:43):
and in the shipping industry, peopleknow the Straight, but it also has
its deep dark secrets. So we'llhave a good look tonight at everything to
do with Bass Straight. And duringthe week I had had a really good

(03:07):
look around to getting through books andonline, and I found that there really
is a huge amount of strange thingsthat have occurred in that particular area.
So where am I actually talking about? So this is the location of Bass
Strait. So you can see amap of Australia and that purple area down

(03:31):
the bottom there, which represents thebody of water between Tasmania and Australia,
that is Bass Straight. And thisis another map that also gives you a
bit of an idea. So there'sTasmania and the island on the island chain

(03:53):
on the right is Flinder's Island andthe island chain off to the left is
King Island. And that's where FredValenti was flying to in nineteen seventy eight
when when he disappeared over this bodyof water. And you can't really talk
about BA Straight without talking about FredValenti, and I did an episode on

(04:15):
him a few weeks ago, sowe will talk about him again, but
only sort of in a grace notekind of a way, I sort of
want to really focus on looking atother strange aspects to do with the straight,
So I'm just gonna hide that andbring back my smiling face of warm.

(04:39):
So bastraight is generally very shallow,an average depth of fifty meters or
one hundred and sixty feet. It'sa stretch of water that's approximately three hundred
kilometers wide and two hundred kilometers fromnorth to south, and it's encompassed by

(05:00):
the entire northern coastline of Tasmania andVictoria's central to eastern coast. So where
I live here in East Gippsland,when I go to the beach, I
am basically looking over the eastern sideof Bass Strait. The prevailing winds and
currents are westerly, and they sureare, they can certainly blow, and

(05:24):
the latter being divided by King Island, Tasmania at the western entrance to the
state, causing unpredictable sea conditions,especially when strong winds occur. For example,
strong southerly winds can cause a strongnortherly current reflecting from the Victorian coast,
and the combination of wind currents,tidal flow and the shallow bottom often

(05:48):
leads to tour waves, often ofshort length with a confused short swell,
often conflicting in directions. So it'sa very dangerous stretch of water when it's
raging. It really is. AndI've crossed it myself about well, I've
had four trips to Tasmania, sothat's all of them are on the boat,

(06:09):
so that I've been across the straiteight times, and I've been across
it when it's been as calm andas flat as a billiard table with a
full moon night to another time whenI went over and you couldn't stand up
on them. You couldn't stand up, you had to lay on your bed
because the boat was going up anddown so much across there. So it
can be a very violent, turbulentand also flat and calm body of water,

(06:34):
extremely unpredictable. So all the shippingto the busy ports of Melbourne in
Victoria, Stanley, Bernie, Devenportand Lon System on Tasmania and even King
Island and Flinder's Island, every alltraffic, all shipping must pass through that's

(06:54):
straight and it's also the route ofchoice for many ships passing from the Australian
West Coast. To the east coast, and most air traffic between Tasmania and
the Australian mainland flies in at leastpart of it or adjacent to Bass Straight.
So it's very hard for the transportindustry to not engage with this rather

(07:15):
interesting body of water. So wego and have a look at some of
the strange, well that's not sostrange. We'll have a look at some
of the disappearances that have occurred inBass Straight. Because the Fred Valancige case,
which I mentioned before, it kindof is the centerpiece and the hallmark

(07:39):
event that really brought the world's attentionto this body of water. And just
as a little bit of a recapon that, there's Fred and a mock
up of his plane. There's apicture of Fred again, and this picture
perhaps shows you what sort of afurlough it actually did care cause at the

(08:05):
time, so it made it madeheadlines. So so that incident sort of
made people sort of go, well, what else has occurred in this area?
And even this week having a lookthrough it's just been sort of incredible.
Now, some of the things I'mgoing to read to you, they

(08:26):
may have natural explanations. There maybe perfectly normal reasons why tragedy struck in
some of these cases and some ofthese aircraft and some of these ships,
but each and every one of themis still no one knows definitively what happened

(08:48):
to these vessels and to some ofthe aircraft that I'm going to talk about,
including another very experienced pilot. Sothat said, we'll make a start
and we'll have a look at sortof the pre twentieth century accounts, so
going back to the nineteenth century,perhaps the eighteenth century, going back in

(09:11):
time to when white settlers first hadtheir experiences with bass straight and there were
many reports of shit disappearing during thenineteenth century. And in fact, it's
almost a logical thing because you're talkingabout the boats from a much older period,
and they would have encountered storms andthey would have had problems, there's
no question about that. But thething to stay to pay attention to in

(09:35):
the cases I'm going to talk abouttoday is that they all were still mysteries,
still unknown fates. And that'll comeout even more as we get to
the end of this week's episode andI start talking about some more bizarre stuff
towards the end. So you've gotto hang around for that. So first

(10:00):
recorded incident of a disappearance was ofa ship called the Eliza in seventeen ninety
seven, so that's pretty early.Australia was officially discovered in seventeen eighty eight,
so not that long after, andthe vessel was part of a salvage
operation for the Sydney Cove, anotherboat which had recently become wrecked on the
Rocky Coast, and the Eliza seeminglyvanished off the face of the earth during

(10:22):
the rescue attempt. Nobody really knowswhat happened. In eighteen fifty eight,
the British ship the HMAS Sapo Sapphomet the same fate as it ventured into
the Straits Deadly waters. It sailedfrom the Cape of Good Hope for Sydney

(10:45):
on the eighth of January eighteen fiftyeight, but failed to arrive. As
she was not expected in Sydney,her non appearance didn't really cause any concern
until later in the year, sothe ship doesn't come in, but no
one's really concerned. In October eighteenfifty eight, Admiral Loring in Sydney was
informed that the Sappo had been seenby the crew of the schooner the Yarrow

(11:09):
off Cape Bridgewater, Victoria at thewestern entrance to Bass Straight on the eighteenth
of February. Extensive searches by anumber of vessels, including the Elk and
the HMVS Victoria, failed to findany trace of the Sappho that had disappeared,

(11:30):
and later in eighteen fifty eight,rumors began spreading in England that the
vessel had been wrecked on an islandoff the coast of Australia, and some
of the survivors had been rescued,and that the captain, Captain Moresby,
had gone insane. And these rumorsdid the rounds of the international press for
every year as they were picked upand passed along. And there was no

(11:50):
truth to any of these rumors,that they couldn't be substantiated in any way.
And a similar event took place thisis in Bass Straight again twelve years
later, when the Harleck Castle disappeared. I think, actually, before I
go too much further, I've gotan image of the Sappo here. It's
easy to get ahead of your aheadof your slide, so that's that's what

(12:13):
she looked like, the HMAS Sappo. So this is another another time and
place when you're talking about these sortof ships. So the Harleck Castle,
which twelve years later took twenty threecrew members with her when she disappeared,

(12:33):
and it disappeared after leaving Melbourne,Victoria for Newcastle in New South Wales and
twenty sixth of June eighteen seventy witha crew of twenty three. And she
was an iron clipper of eleven hundredand twelve tons, so it wasn't exactly
a little ship. And a vesselresembling her was seen by another ship at
the schooner called the Alcandre, aboutsixty nautical miles south of Cape Howe and

(13:00):
appeared to be listing badly. Thegovernment steamer far Or searched back straight and
it's eastern approaches without result. Soit's a couple of examples, and in
the early days you can probably easilysay, yeah, well that ship was
seen listing, you know, youknow, they could have come to very
much natural demises and be on thebottom of the of the of the Southern

(13:24):
Ocean. But it starts to buildthe mystery of the Strait when they can
find nothing. You're talking big ships, you're talking things floating in the water.
You're talking oil slicks and things likethat as we get further on.
So the strike is swallowing ships up, that's the that's the starting point for

(13:48):
it. And it's very likely thatthere's so many more examples of ships that
probably haven't even been recorded. Theseare just some of the biggest ships and
the more famous ones. And ifthere's something, there's something in this stretch
of water, perhaps some naturally occurringphenomenon that we simply don't understand, it's
unlikely to be a recent occurrence,and more likely has been happening for centuries.

(14:11):
And unless the reasons for the bountyof ships and planes and people that
have gone missing over the years andthe bass straight triangles uncovered, more mysterious
incidents are likely to continue to happenfor more years in the future. Although
having said that, there's hasn't beenany real recent instances of ships or planes

(14:35):
disappearing. This has tend to havebeen eighteenth, nineteenth, and perhaps twentieth
century sort of a phenomenon to thispoint. But it's all very interesting.
Now we're going to have a lookat an aircraft, which is the Miss
Hobart in October nine thirty four,So we're coming right up into the twentieth

(14:56):
century. While crossing Bass Straight inperfect weather conditions for flying, the airliner
Miss Hobart vanished without a trace.There were twelve passengers and two pilots.
Neither day nor even the smallest amountof wreckage was ever discovered, despite extensive

(15:16):
searches by military aircraft and vessels inthe water and aviation experts both at that
time in nine thirty four and todaybelieve that the loss of the Miss Hobart
to be a genuine mystery, notleast due to the de Haviland DH eighty

(15:39):
six aircraft being one of the mostadvanced of its era. It made use
of four independent engines, with thelikelihood of all four engines failing at the
same time being almost universally dismissed thatit could not possibly have lost all four
engines, and the plane was designedthat it should have been able to be

(16:03):
guided in to an emergency landing strangenine thirty four, And I can show
you a picture of it. Thisis it here, So that's the Miss
Hobart. Quite an unusual looking aircraft, but that disappeared. It was basically
a mail plane and carried passengers aswell, So it just disappeared, and

(16:29):
we will look at that a littlebit more. And this all adds context
and gravista to the Fred Valentia's disappearance, and this case does particularly so.
The last transmission from the Miss Hobartspookily mirrors Fred Valentiaci's experience. The crews
allegedly claimed they could hear the soundof a plane around them, and there

(16:52):
were several reports of an aerial machinecoming towards them. That's very similar to
Fred Valentiage. They then reported thatthe humming sound had suddenly stopped and nothing
more was heard from the Miss Hobartafter that. That's the point where she
was disappeared off the face of theearth. So on Friday the nineteenth October

(17:15):
nineteenth nine thirty four, the alarmwent out that the airline of the Miss
Hobart had gone missing between Lonceston andMelbourne, Lonceston being in northern Tasmania,
and she had ten She had twelvepeople on board, ten Tasmanians, seven
men, including the Reverend at Warrenof Saint Mary's Township on the east coast,

(17:37):
two women on one with a smallchild. The Reverend Hubert Warren was
on his way to take over SaintThomas's Church Endfield in Sydney, his wife
and children deciding not to accompany him, but had planned to travel to Sydney
by steamer, which was a goodresult for them. One of the women
was a Miss kay Mercer, awell known competitive horse rider from Campbelltown in
the Midlands in New South Wales.Was one of the men was Garnered Rupert

(18:03):
Goreley, who had served the firstBattalion Commonwealth Horse during the Anglo Ball War
and later with the fortieth Battalion inWorld War One, and mister Gilbert Jenkins
and Captain VC Holloman, traffic managerof Holloman's Airways, piloted the airliner.
And Gilbert Jenkins was ex Royal AustralianAir Force and ex Canadian Air Force,

(18:25):
with which he had commanded a squadron, and after leaving the service, mister
Jenkins had further comprehensive flying experience,commuting between the mainland and Tasmania many many
times, and it was only inJuly at the same year that he had
accepted the post with Holloman's Airways.The owners of the Miss Hobart and the

(18:49):
plane was last. So these pilotswere experienced guys. They were not They
were no dummies. They had manyhours experience flying. So you've got a
perfectly serve usable aircraft and two skilledpilots behind the wheel. So the plane
was last heard from it about tentwenty when it approached the Victorian Coast.

(19:10):
I was getting quite close to Victoriaand the message was received at Laborton stating
that they were over Redondo Island.Alls. Well, that was the message,
and there indicators that it had passedover Wilson's promontory, but what happened
next remains a mystery. No finalconclusion was ever reached by the subsequent inquiry

(19:30):
after the plane disappeared into nothing.As soon as it was apparent that Miss
Hobart was overdue, the alarm bellswere rained and Hollyman's Airways Propriety Limited immediately
contacted the Civil Aviation Department and thedessult of monoplane began searching the area immediately.
Visibility was good that late afternoon,and as time progressed with no results,

(19:53):
other planes joined in the search,and at dawn on Sunday, October
the twenty first. That's a significantdate, that's the date that Fred Valentis
disappeared. So very very interesting thatyou've got this is happening in October.
This plane disappeared in October. Freddisappeared in October, and that comes back

(20:15):
again a little bit later on soso as dawn on that day of Sunday,
October twenty first significant date, theRoyal Australian Air Force sent out a
Supermarine flying boat and the route fromTasmania to Essendon in nineteen thirty four was
northeast from Western Junction over Flinder's Island, following a line from the small islands

(20:37):
in Bass Strait north of Flinders toJanecke Aerodrome, where emergency supplies of petrol
were kept, and onto Essendon.That that was the sort of the flight
route. And Miss Hobart was undercontract to the Commonwealth and had only begun
it's Melbourne, Lonceston and Hobart servicesin October first, so the plane itself
had only done a couple of tripsand forth, really not even a month,

(21:03):
and in the test flights the planehad shown no indications of any problems
at all. It flew three timesa week, usually by way of King
Island from Melbourne to Tasmania and bythe way of Flinder's Island on the return
journey. Besides the ten passengers thatcarried email and all the occupants of Miss
Hobart were enclosed in one large cabin, so they started debating what could have

(21:29):
possibly gone wrong, and a possiblecause of trouble was a plane might have
run out of petrol, perhaps becauseof the leakage, but it was that
they couldn't be sure, and overthe weekend the search was intensified, but
only one important, but only oneclue of importance was found, a large
patch of oil located by the Southamptonflying Boat near Citadel Island, about ten

(21:51):
miles west of Wilson's Promontory, andthere was further hope. A collier steaming
in the vicinity witnessed two flares atLiptrap, but although they steamed close to
the beach, they saw nothing,and later it was revealed that the Miss
Hobart didn't even carry flares. Sixplanes had now joined the search, including
Miss Lonceston, sister plane to MissHobart, but besides the oil slick,

(22:15):
there was little other evidence and thesearch was joined by a number of ships,
including coastal steamers, but no wreckageor any other clue was discovered,
and the search order was broadened andsamples of the oil slick were taken for
analysis to determine whether the film wascaused by earl similar to those used in
the engines of Miss Hobart. Now, two surveyors who were working between a

(22:44):
lighthouse and the National Parks Chalet toldauthorities they heard an aircraft droning sound behind
the big mountain in that area calledMount Oberon, and then suddenly it was
silent. So they said that thisplane traveling along. They were down on
the ground at that time, andall of a sudden it went silent,

(23:07):
and a nearby ship's captain, misterJ. Millington, reported a bright flash
in the sky above Cape Liptrap Strange. So by the Monday October the twenty
third, it became apparent that thissearch was pretty much fruitless, and the
Civil Aviation Department decided to abandon it. And the belief was that the craft

(23:29):
had fallen into bats straight and therewas no hope for its passengers, so
it was pretty much, you know, they sort of had to give up.
And some believed at the time thatthe pilots of the Miss Hobart had
were forced to attempt a pank apancake landing on the ocean's surface. So

(23:51):
in such a case, the MissHobart would have all probably dived straight for
the seabed and there would have beenno wreckage on the surface. So but
they really don't know what happened.So the Duke of Gloucester, who was
visiting Australia at the time, sentthe following message to the Governor of Tasmania.
I am profoundly distressed at the lossof the airliner Miss Hobart. Please

(24:15):
convey my deeper sympathy to the relativesand dependence of all those who lost their
lives. And telegrams from the GovernorGeneral and the Governor of Victoria came as
well. But by the Friday ofthat week, October twenty six, the
disaster was slipping out of the headlines, and although ships had passed through the

(24:36):
area where the craft was believed tohave been down, there was no further
reports of wreckage, and the beliefthat it had crashed into Bastrait was accepted,
but there was no definitive proof.You've got a perfectly serviceable aircraft flown
by two highly skilled and trained pilotson a beautiful, clear and sunny morning,

(24:59):
just disap here talking about all's well, there's reports of a sound of
another craft around them and they disappear. So that's the Miss Hobart and that
really echoes the Fred Valenti case.Really a lot so. And it's such

(25:22):
a beautiful looking craft, it reallyis. Now. Another strange incident that
occurred was the Loner incident, whichwas almost a year after disappearance of the
Miss Hobart. Another plane, theLoiner, and I've got a picture of
that one as well. There wego, so this one would vanish while

(25:52):
traveling from Melbourne to Tasmania. Theaircraft had just radio the control tower in
Tasmania to say it was preparing tomake its approach to land when suddenly it
went silent. He carried three passengersand two pilots. Well, none of
the five people on board were everlocated. A search of the water did
recover some minimal wreckage. Three ofthe plane's seats were discovered, as well

(26:15):
as pieces of the petrol tank.Perhaps most intriguingly, however, was a
small piece of floor of the plane. There appeared to be a burnt patch
only several centimeters wide. Further analysissuggested the area had been in flames and
other materials appeared to show someone hadtried to intensely stamp it out. Whether
this small detail had anything to dowith the fate of the plane is unknown.

(26:37):
So in this particular case, theydid find wreckage of the plane,
So the plane you could say,didn't disappear outright. The plane definitely crashed,
but there was again no real reasonfor this plane to disappear. All
of this will tie in and makea lot more sense once I get to
the end in this start to seesome of the strange history around the Bass

(27:03):
Strait area. So there we go. Now, another famous disappearance in the
Bass Strait was of a ship calledthe SS Amelia J. So this is
the Amelia J. Here mis leadsinto another disappearance there. So in nine

(27:26):
twenty, while sailing in the BassStrait, the SS Amelia J disappeared without
a trace, shortly after entering theinfamous stretch of water. The Australian military
would conduct an extensive search of thearea. However, one of the military
aircraft involved in the search also vanishedand perhaps strangest about the incident are reports

(27:48):
of strange lights being seen in theskies over Bass Straight at the time that
the ship disappeared. So what happened? The Amerely J was a three masted
schooner with four hundred and four tons, a fairly big boat, and she
sailed from Newcastle to four bound forHobart on the twenty first of August nineteen

(28:11):
twenty with Cole and a total crewof twelve that she failed to arrive.
She was last seen off Jervis Bay, New South Wales by the crew of
the SS Melbourne on the fifth ofSeptember nineteen twenty, and her owner arranged
for SS Musgrove at Musgrave to conducta search of the Ferno group of islands

(28:33):
down near Tasmania, beginning what wasprobably the largest search for a missing vessel
yet conducted in Australia, and thatwas in nineteen This is in nineteen twenty
and the first one to make useof aircraft, and the government initially refused
to send a warship in search ofthe Ameliate J, but the public outcry
was so great that the HMAS Platypuswas sent to investigate the islands and as

(28:57):
that was considered to be the mostlikely spot that the vessel may have come
to grief. At the same time, another ship called the Southern Cross also
had disappeared around the same time.And this is a Southern Cross, So
that was a wooden wooden barkent teentwo hundred and fifty seven ton wooden ex

(29:19):
auxiliary steamer two ninety one Tom's grossquite another substantial ship called the Southern Cross,
and it was originally a steam yachtbuilt for missionary purposes by missions to
the South Pacific, and it wassold for commercial purposes and converted to a

(29:41):
sailing ship nineteen o four. Andit had left Melbourne on September eleven,
twenty for Hobart with a case ofoil and its belief and its believed but
not known to have taken fire,exploded and lost with all hands. Yet
no wreckage of any kind or anytrace of the throw was found. So

(30:02):
the Southern Cross and the Amelia Jboth disappeared. So on the twenty third
September twenty two to Haveland by planesnine a biplanes just to be specific was
sent off to look for to searchfor for both both ships. So and

(30:30):
that's that's the first plane that wasused in searching for missing ships in Australia,
So which is really interesting and andone of these planes was flown by
Major stut Stutt, who was lastseen flying into heavy cloud on the northwestern

(30:51):
coast of Cape Barren Island before hedisappeared, and the search for the missing
schooner had to be extended to coverthe plane as well. Now, Captain
stut He was an Englishman. Thisis going to show you again that this
guy there was no slouch. Hejoined the Australian Army on the twenty ninth

(31:11):
of July nineteen nineteen to be alocal and temporary captain while employed at the
Central Flying School at Point Cook inVictoria. And when he and Major Anderson
were ordered to search for the missingAmelia J and Southern Cross, they decided
to sweep over the Bastraight Islands beforeproceeding down the Tasmanian East coast. The
two aircraft set out together but apparentlybecame separated in clouds off the northeast coast,

(31:36):
and they'd been instructed to fly attwelve thousand feet, this crucially giving
them a gliding range of twelve tofifteen miles in the event of engine trouble
enabling them to land on an islandor the mainland. Now, Captain stut
was a capable, qualified pilot andhis DH to Havelin nine A aircraft was

(31:56):
in first class order and there wasno known clue as to what could have
caused him and his plane to disappear. So the HMAS Platypus was later withdrawn
to search for survivors of the SouthernCross and it was replaced by the destroyer
Swordsman, and other searches were conductedaround the Ferno group of islands were carried

(32:16):
out by the SS Dolphin, amodel launch called the Talk, and the
SS Melbourne. No trace of eitherschooner or aircraft was ever ever found.
Really really interesting. So that soundslike a big history lesson, but it

(32:37):
sort of sets the tone and itshows you that Fred's disappearance in nineteen seventy
eight did have echoes back through theprevious decades and even into the previous centuries,
and those two other plane disappearances akind of a kind of eerie in
itself too, with the Miss Hobartbeing you know, a top a top

(33:00):
liner for for that plane, withgreat pilots and also Captain Stutt being a
top quality mean the top quality plane. So the mystery was really quite high
as to what had happened and thetwo ships that had gone as well.
So it's it's if you can't saythat that that that the two ships necessarily

(33:22):
were had some type of paranormal interaction, but then you can't say that they
didn't either. And that's going tocome out a little bit more as we
travel through. So we're going tofast forward a few years now. We're
going to come into around nineteen sixtyseven around this time. So once once

(33:45):
I read through what I'm going tohave a look at, now you're sort
of going to start seeing that thestrait itself is a hotbed for paranormal activity.
And so in nineteen sixty seven therewas a flap of UFOs a Tasmania
and Bass Strait, and the activitypeaked around August, which is winter here,

(34:05):
middle of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, with more than a dozen sightings
on both sides of the strait.Most came from Tasmania, and a strange
object was observed as bright lights groupedtogether at the town of Bernie. And
I'm just going to take you upand show you a little bit of a
map of northern Tasmania. So that'snorthern Tasmania, and where the red dot

(34:30):
is a town called Alveston, anda little bit to the west of that,
right on the coast is another towncalled Bernie about midway along on that
map. So that's just something tohave to bear in mind, just in
relation to this. So a brightlights group together around that town of Bernie
on the north coast, which iswhich is the boundary of Bass Strait.

(34:53):
Minutes later, the object was reportedover Alvaston, that other image with the
little red dropper on it, twentyeight kilometers away. Minutes later, twenty
eight kilometers away by a police constable. The policeman noted six lights in formation
turn and fly out over the strait. So these strange lights turned around and

(35:14):
flew out over the strait. Anothersiding came from a motorist on his way
to Bernie and he saw a brightcigar shaped object suddenly appear from the west
about two hundred meters in the sky, and the object was long and brightly
illuminated. After a minute, thelights began to fade and it then accelerated

(35:34):
and disappeared. This is all withinthe same time. So he also shows
you that you can have one objectappear and then other objects appear when you
have flaps. And this is Ithink, is what's happening down in Tasmania
at that time. And two dayslater, six UFOs were seen on the
northeast tip of Tasmania a bit alongBay Man and seven people in a hunting

(35:58):
party all saw the eject And sothis is where that area is. This
is over on the east coast ofTasmania. So the other map I showed
you was right along there and that'sbeen Along Bay. So up to the
north where that cape is at thetop there, that's bass straight running around
the top of it. So thisis only just down and just out of

(36:20):
the bass straight out of the bassstraight area. So at that area six
days so six UFOs were seen onthe northeast tip of Tasmania at that bay,
and seven people in a hunting partyall saw the object. And three
years later another man, mister Glattie, reported to the Royal Australian Navy that

(36:42):
he had seen a mysterious object atbeen Along Bay and he said sixty seven
it moved up to about nineteen seventy. He said it seemed to rise out
of the water. This object seemedto rise out of the water. And
it was also spotted by two minutesin Helen's which is also on the same

(37:02):
coast, and who said it wasabout the size of a porpoise, and
they said it moved very slowly highinto the sky, suddenly turned direction as
it neared Bass Strait. It wasa cigar shape without wings, but left
a vapor trial. The men hadseen some same type of object before,

(37:27):
so they'd seen that same type ofobject before, but it had went away
in the opposite direction. So we'vegot these UFO reports that are occurring right
on the coast, the northern coast, the northeastern coast, the central coast,
right on that southern boundary of BassStrait. And also earlier in the

(37:51):
year in nineteen seventy three young menstopped their car between Bernie and Alveston,
and that's back to this map here, So there's Albuston's the dropper and Bernie's
just off to the left a littlebit further along right on the coast.
So it's in this area here onthe north central and that's bas straight that
big body of water on that man. So three young men stopped their car

(38:20):
between Bernie and Alveston after watching astrange phenomenon over the strait. So they're
looking out over bas Straight and ayoung man took a photo which showed four
objects surrounded by a shadowy haze,and the witnesses said the object appeared to
be white and hovered for a while. These four objects out over that's straight.

(38:40):
Two months later, not far fromthe same spot, two other independent
men noticed an object twisting and turningat blistering speed over the water, and
it was seen by another man whogave a similar description, and aviation authorities
claimed that there was no aircraft inthe area at that time. So this

(39:07):
is this is flaps in sixty sevenflapsince nineteen seventy. And don't forget that
all these reports are fairly You don'tget all the reports. You just don't.
I can't even access all the reports. This is just the stuff that
I'm finding that ties all this together. This Bass Straight triangle, the ships,

(39:28):
the ships disappearing, the strange,the three aircraft disappearing, and then
you've got a strong, strong historyof UFO activity in the area. And
three days later in that same area, strange, a strange craft with a
green tail flashed across the sky earlyin the morning and went out to sea

(39:53):
over neither been a long area,so sorry it wasn't Abuston. It was
over on the on the east coast. So again we've got a third report
here right on the northeastern almost onthe northeastern tip of Tasmania, right up
there where Bastrada is. So thisgreen strange craft with a green tail flashed

(40:17):
across the sky in the morning andwent out to see neither near the bill
Along area. And so sightings alongTasmania's north coast continued right throughout that year,
again, reaching their peak in August. So seventy two was a very

(40:40):
big UFO year, and I've spokenabout that in other episodes, and there's
none more so really and around Tasmaniaand Bastradia is no exception either. So
in nineteen seventy two and a mancalled Bill Merton on June was leaving his

(41:01):
house at eight thirty when he lookedback back inside his house and he saw
an orange glow in the kitchen andhe was thinking that he left the light
on, but all the lights hadbeen switched off, and he stepped out
the back door and he came faceto face with a solid, dull metallic

(41:22):
object which was ten meters long,five meters high, and it had approximately
thirty orange lights on its whole areaand it lit up. The whole area
was lit up by the object,and a fierce wind was blowing. This
is at eight thirty at night onJune sixteen, nineteen seventy two, so
the objects had this orange light comingin through his kitchen window. He's gone

(41:45):
outside and he's come face to facewith this ten meter long, five meter
high craft. And there was anincrease in sightings around September October nineteen seventy
two. So that's when the MissHobart disappeared in nineteen thirty four. Fred
Valentia disappeared in October nineteen seventy eight. And here we have around September October

(42:09):
nineteen seventy two reports from northern Tasmaniaand as far away as Victoria across the
other side of Bass Strait over herewhere I am, near where I live
in nearby towns of Sale, whichis about a fifty minute drive from here
in Duralgan, which is an hourand a half from here. So at

(42:29):
this same time, just off thecoast on the Victorian side, there's a
lot of strange things going on.And in nineteen seventy six, a middle
aged man on the northeast coast ofTasmania believes he may have seen figures inside
a UFO and the object hovered justabove the ground and was no more than
twenty five meters away from him,and there was a white light emanating from

(42:52):
the bottom. Each window was domeshaped and the craft looked like alan minium.
And through four windows the man citycould see motionless shapes that look either
looked like high bucket seats of acar, and he didn't know if he
had seen seats or something sitting onthem. And the object flew off at

(43:15):
fantastic speed and was out of sightin eight seconds. So northeast Tasmania is
over on that with that like thatbeen along bay that northeast over on the
eastern side of Bastrait. So it'sinteresting to say, like, did those
ships back in the back in thenineteenth century, did they encounter anything out

(43:38):
there in the water. Nothing wasfound, not even a stitch of timber,
nothing from any of those ships.And I'm not saying that they can't
sink to the bottom and everything gowith them. I'm sure they can.
But with ships disappearing, you thinkthere'd be some type of wreckage, some
type of debris as things those shipssync, then things billow up to the

(44:01):
top, so including bodies, andthat just didn't happen. And scores of
reports followed in nineteen seventy seven frommid to southern areas of Victoria all the
way down to Hobart, and astrange craft was seen at Moe in Victoria.
Moi's about probably about an hour andthree quarters from where I'm living,

(44:27):
where I'm sitting right now, soI was only only drove through it on
the weekend. And this was seenin Moi, and it was traveling from
the Basstrad area. And it wasalmost two years to the day that Fred
disappears again in October nineteen seventy seven, and the object was seen by three

(44:47):
teenage boys at seven forty pm,and the night was dark and quiet,
but it was clear, and theoval shaped object was well lit by a
white light and it stopped and hoveredover the trees, and the boys claimed
that it had legs and was thesize of the moon from where they were,
and they were about five hundred metersaway, and after five minutes it

(45:13):
suddenly vanished without a sound. Interesting. Now we're gon go a little bit
further, a little bit further awayfrom Bass Strait, but not that far
really, we're going to go toNew Zealand. And this is a very
strange case that it's so strange,but I love it and I'm sure you'll

(45:36):
find it interesting as well. Soin that nineteen seventy eight period, and
this was in the town of Gisbone, I'm just going to show a quick
map for reference. So this isNew Zealand, and this is the North
Island and the town of Gisbon iswhere that red dropper is, just to
sort of give you that perspective.So I know I've digressed a little,

(46:02):
but it's time frame. It's timeframe. It's all time frame. And
if you're in a UFO, I'msure you can fly from Bass straight to
New Zealand in in a flash,no problem at all, and come back
again anytime you like. So thisis all a very small area when you're
talking about craft that can behave inthese in these ways, this is an

(46:24):
extremely strange case. So in Gisbane, a farmer he saw a flying saucer
land on his farm, open itsdoors inward, and there was a bright
red interior that was emanating out brightinterior life. And the farmer happened to

(46:52):
look down towards his dog kennels andhe saw a really strange sight. He
saw two humanoids carrying one of hisdogs between them, running towards the craft,
and the humanoids were four foot eightinches tall, and they wore metallic
silver suits and white opaque helmets.The farmer raised his gun and fired,

(47:19):
hitting one of the humanoids, andthe pair of them dropped. The dog
and the wounded humanoid scurried off intothe bushes, and the other one into
the craft, which took off verticallyin a great speed, And the dog,
which had been unconscious, stood upand started barking, and the humanoid

(47:40):
in the bush had vanished. Andlater the same day, granular pieces of
blue green crystallized material rained down ona car traveling in the area, and
there were dozens of sightings in theGisbon area within nineteen days of this bizarre
farm incident. Also in the nineteenseventy eight time period, so this is

(48:02):
a very active time. We've gotthe bass straight, we've got we've got
the Tasmanian cases, we've got FredValentis, we've got extreme UFO activity,
and you could say high strangeness casesoccurring over in Um, carrying over in
New Zealand, in Gisbone. Soand there's just there's so many more cases

(48:28):
you know this that are around thisnineteen seventy eight period, you know,
and in the following weeks before andFred disappeared, you know, other cases
cropped up. So, for example, on October nine, a husband and
wife witnessed a bright light above themactually come down to the level of their

(48:49):
car and maintain pace beside them asthey drove in Tasmania on October ninth,
nine seventy eight, so about afortnight before Fred disappeared. And by the
time you get to a month later, so early September after Fred's disappearance,
a taxi driver in Hobart was suddenlyforced to slam on his brakes due to

(49:12):
a strange green glow in the middleof the road. His communication radio also
went out, and by the timehe had returned his gaze to the road,
the green object was nowhere to beseen and on November twenty fifth,
So Fred disappeared October twenty first.Now we've moved through to November twenty fifth.

(49:37):
In San fred Tasmania, a womanreported a doorway of light suddenly appearing
in the front of her property,and perhaps even stranger, she could see
through the doorway to her driveway onthe other side. So it's almost like
some sort of a gateway or aportal had had appeared. And another interesting

(50:02):
little little addendum to Fred Valenti isin relation to a guy called a young
guy called Jason Manifold and his fatherhad taken this famous photograph when Fred had
disappeared. He took six photos,and the last photo showed this strange object

(50:22):
with sort of like crystal lights offto the left and some sort of a
cloud off to the right. Definitelya physical object, not an imperfection in
the film, very famous photo.So the son of the man who took
that photo, he said that onthe evening in question, Jason remained outside

(50:47):
watching the sky and although he didn'tsee anything, he could hear the sound
of a plane engine overhead. Thisis at the time Fred Valentiche disappeared,
and instead of gradually fading off intothe distance. He edge and the engine
suddenly came to a stop, asif someone had turned a radio off,
and then there was nothing but silence. So at the time Fred disappeared at

(51:10):
the same time that his father tookthe photograph on the beach, the son
Jason is saying he heard a planeflying and then he heard nothing. It
had just stopped, So this isall context. Context. Then in nineteen
seventy nine, going back to boats, a yacht, the Charleston, which

(51:32):
was this boat here the picture ofit right here, Somber nine, seventy
nine. So a year after ayear and a few months after Fred disappeared,
the Charleston, along with five crewmembers, would vanish without a trace
while sailing along that straight. Theyacht was scheduled to arrive in Sydney for

(51:58):
New Year's Eve and it was totake part in the Sydney to Hobart yacht
Race, which is a famous yachtrace. And the last report that was
received was on the tenth of Decemberwhen it's skipper, millionaire Hobart businessman Charles
Davies who's pictured there in that photo. He radioed that he was off Babel
island in Bass Strait and making goodprogress, and that was the last anyone

(52:23):
heard, and the Charleston failed toreach its destination. And given that it
was only a year after the FredValancie incident, the public was puzzled and
fearful of the waters of Bastrait,and with no contact and no arrival,

(52:46):
search planes were sent out in adesperate bid to find the apparently stricken vessel.
And then all the theories came up, so nothing of the all the
people on board was ever discovered,you know, and then all the logical
explanations come out, you know,like it was possible that damage could have

(53:07):
been inflicted upon the mast, orperhaps a loose container from the ships passing
through the area damaged the rudder,and that's the container, ships, container,
big loose containers we're talking about thisAnd if this was a case as
possible that the yacht could have driftedas far as the islands south of New
Zealand. And famously, in anabsolute desperation for information, family members of

(53:34):
the crew even visited a clarivoyant whostated that the crew had come upon an
island south of their known last location. But I don't know what you can
put into that, and the yacht'sfate to this day is still a mystery.
Even in World War Two there wasstrange incidences. Seventeen military planes were

(53:58):
lost over Bass Strait seven teen duringWorld War Two. Now it must be
said that that was a training baseat the time and they were training in
aircraft and flying fast and low outover the water, so no doubt there
would have been accidents, and Ibelieve there was even faults with the Beauford
bombers at that time, and manyplanes were actually lost. But seventeen jets

(54:22):
were lost over not jets, theseare this is pre jet era. The
planes were lost over Bass Straight.And in nineteen forty four a strange dark
shadow came out of nowhere and flewbeside a Bristol Beauford bomber for almost twenty

(54:45):
minutes over Bass Straight. So here'sone of these bombers flying along and a
dark shadow came along and tracked withthe with the Beauford bomber for twenty minutes
over Bass Straight and then without warningit shot straight up at an amazing pace
and vanished. And two years earlier, in nineteen forty two, an Australian

(55:09):
fighter pilot took his plane over theBass Strait after orders to investigate reports of
strange lights made by fishermen, andas he surveyed the area, a huge
bronze disk came out of the cloudsand settled alongside the plane for several moments
before vanishing as quickly as it hadappeared. So I hope I've been able

(55:34):
to give you a really good insightinto that stretch of water, the Bass
Strait, the infamous Bass Strait.All the way back from the nineteenth century
and right through up until the twentiethcentury, there's been many strange incidences,
lots of UFO reports around Tasmania.What I've talked about today is just a

(55:55):
small smattering, it really is.There's a lot more cases out there,
and I'll dig more up to talkabout Tasmanian cases in greater detail. So
thank you so much for joining metoday or tonight, and I really look
forward to seeing you again next weekwhen we delve deeply into unexplained phenomena as

(56:16):
it relates to Australia. And Ireally hope that you have a fantastic night
and just ponder over some of thesethings that we've been talking about. And
even perhaps do your own research ifyou like, and look at some of
those boats, look at some ofthose planes in an hour show. There's

(56:36):
only so much you can actually do, but until next week, have a
great week. C