Reports of Unidentified Flying Object – Earlier Incidents
The Knowles encounter resulted in some earlier incidents being reported. An example is that of two motorists (names on file) who never intended to talk about the i11cident be cause they did not want to be thought crazy. The event occurred on the Eyre Highway, near BaJladonia, west of Mundrabilla. Suddenly a big, bright light appeared on the horizon in front of their car. The driver and his companion thought it was a truck, so moved over. The light, which seemed to be hogging the middle of the road, approached at about the speed of a truck. As it got closer the driver cursed him for not dipping his lights and gave a blast of full beam as a warning. This had no effect. With the light blinding them, the driver slowed down and waited for the “truck” to pass. When the light came to within about 100 yards, everything conked out-car engine, lights, and radio.
The light slowed and made a couple of slow passes over the car. In no time at all the two were perspiring and the metal of the car became hot to touch-it was like an oven inside. The witnesses could do nothing but sit there. The object made a humming sound like a vacuum cleaner. The driver said that he was too curious to be scared, but did admit to being “rattled” by the experience. The whole incident lasted only a few minutes, then the light turned and took off at a fast speed in the direction in which it had been headed.
Another witness came forward with a report that his car had been picked up on the same stretch of road before being dropped back to the ground. This occurred about five years prior to the Knowles event. The witness decided not to report it at the time because he thought he would be ridiculed.
Just two weeks before the Knowleses’ experience, the owner of the Eucla Roadhouse, about sixty miles from Mundrabilla, sighted strange lights when he was looking for a plane, the pilot of which was booked to stay at his motel. When the plane did not turn up at the airstrip at 7:00 p.m. , as expected, he went home . Later that night the owner’s wife said she could see a plane coming in so assumed it was the expected guest. She saw what looked like navigation lights moving over the west of Eucla to ward the airstrip. The lights came down slowly like a plane preparing to land, but then hovered at an elevation of 20° for about a minute. The owner said the lights moved lower, then slowly east, before vanishing over the horizon. He reported the incident to the Eucla police because he feared the plane might have crashed, and then reported it to Air Traffic Control in Perth, who checked with Adelaide Air port. No aircraft were in the area at the time.
The Roadhouse proprietor, who described the sighting as two twinkling lights on top of an ‘ ‘ultraviolet light, ‘ ‘ was mystified by the incident until the Knowles story be came known.
One month prior to the Knowles case a former resident of Eucla reported a sighting. At that time she was living in a house on a hill with an overlooking view of the Great Ocean Bight. She was in bed looking at the stars when a bright Jight appeared and came toward the house, then zoomed away at high speed.