Strange unidentified flying objects dominated the skies over the Darling Dawns city of Warwick during both night and day in 1953. I told a version of this mysterious story on radio 4WK.

The first recorded sighting of a flying saucer over Warwick was in 1947. That’s when electricity was being extended from Warwick to Stanthorpe and several of a field crew of the Toowoomba Electric Light Company looked up shortly after 4pm. What they saw shocked them. It was a bright, fast-moving object, the size of a cricket ball with a tail five or six feet long.

The same thing was seen one hundred miles away above Brisbane, including by a Mrs Emily Scrine of Fairfield. She had earlier been a witness in divorce proceedings that involved hundreds of nude photographs. For this 1947 sighting, the press went to a leading astronomer Arthur Chapman. He was a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, a member of the British Astronomical Association, and a foundation member of the Queensland Astronomical Society. He dismissed the sighting as probably just a meteor.

The following year in 1948, a UFO buzzed the Commercial Hotel at Ipswich. It shook houses, lit up kitchens, and missed children by just a matter of feet, but it was never satisfactorily explained either.

With flying saucers being seen all over south Queensland, in 1953 Warwick became the epicentre.

In January, several Warwick residents at around nine o’clock at night saw a bright light that travelled westward and then gradually faded, only to reappear in the original position. The light was bright enough to cast a faint reflection on a cloud nearby. The witnesses trained binoculars on the object and described it as spherical, with a long tapering tail, and fan-like bulges on each side.

In June that same year, at about three forty-five in the afternoon, four railway workers were stunned when they saw ”an oval shaped object, coloured like a cloud, with stubby wings, and tail.” The men had come from Ellinthorp just north of Warwick. They were working on the Toowoomba-Warwick railway line between Ellinthorp and Elphinstone when one of them shouted there was a flying saucer. They all looked up and watched the thing for about five minutes. It gave off an intense white light, picked up speed and was travelling extremely fast when it disappeared.

One of the men a Mr Leo said that he wasn’t in the habit of seeing things, and that he honestly believed that they had seen some sort of strange aircraft. It should be noted that once before in the Outback at Ilfracombe, Mr Leo thought that he saw a flying saucer then too. It turned out to be a flock of ibis.

In July 1953, yet another strange object was seen over Warwick. For about half an hour from three o’clock in the afternoon, a number of residents watched a flying saucer move slowly around at high altitude.

Among the first to see it were Mr and Mrs Joseph Windle from their nursery on Guy Street. Mr Windle had earlier been the expert called to examine some freak poppy flowers that were astonishing gardeners all over Warwick. He carefully probed inside the flower and conceded it was indeed an unusual plant.

For the flying saucer incident, it was his wife Lillian Windle who the press asked for a statement. She said the object resembled a slow-moving, long white streak. At first, she thought it was plane on fire. But it continued to move slowly and suddenly went vertically upward, turned, and came straight down before levelling out. It moved slowly across the city and performed a slow-motion somersault and levelled out again.

The same object was reported by a number of residents and school children fifty miles away at Kalbar. They saw a “round silvery object”. They all said that it went into a steep dive, levelled out, and then disappeared. Shortly after that the object was seen over Warwick by Mrs Windle.

So whether you accept the explanation of a meteor by the astronomer Arthur Chapman. Or you prefer the eyewitness accounts of Mrs Scrine the nude photograph witness, Mr Leo who once thought a flock of ibis was a flying saucer, and Mrs Windle whose husband was a poppy expert.

One thing for certain is that very strange things were in the air over Warwick in 1953.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION TOLD ON RADIO 4WK.

Photo credits:
Image of a purported UFO – US Department of Defense.
Commercial Hotel – Publocation.
Flying Saucer at Warwick headline – Queensland Times, Ipswich, 24th July 1953, page 3.