Sources
https://www.officeholidays.com/amp/holidays/papua-new-guinea/papua-new-guinea-independence-day
https://culturalatlas.sbs.com.au/papua-new-guinean-culture/papua-new-guinean-culture-religion
https://postcourier.com.pg/alien-visitors-appear-at-boianai/
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/was-the-new-guinea-father-gill-ufo-case-a-false-horizon.11649/
UFOs Down Under: Australasian Encounters by Barry Watts. Pages 143-153.
Transcript
Every now and then, we all get unexpected visitors. They show up unannounced, and may or may not interrupt your evening routine, much to your dismay.
But what if those said unexpected visitors came from the sky? Well, I’ll be talking about one event in which this happened.
Join me and listen to a yarn about the Reverend Gill UFO encounter.
(Cue intro)
Just a quick note before we start. For this episode, I heavily reference the book UFOs Down Under: Australasian Encounters by Barry Watts. This book is very information-heavy and a very useful resource. If you’re interested in Ufology, especially lesser-known cases, I highly recommend it. That being said, it’s time to yarn.
So this case didn’t actually happen in Australia. Instead, we’re going upstairs to Papua New Guinea. The nation is situated north of Australia, and the capital city is Port Moresby. Going further, I’ll be addressing it as its initials PNG. And while we’re at it, I’m gonna give you a mini history lesson, because context is important as to why we’re here in first place, and it’ll give others that aren’t too familiar with our northern neighbour to get to know it more.
Human settlers first arrived on the land around 50 or 60 thousand years ago, walking down from south east Asia via a land bridge during the ice age. The land was one of the first few places to develop agriculture, and an example of a domesticated plant they harvested and still do today is taro.
Though it is no longer practiced today, cannibalism and head hunting was common among tribes. However, there is speculation that some tribes still do practice cannibalism… but they are likely tribes that haven’t had much contact outside of their closed community, and do it for cultural reasons even though it’s frowned upon.
Regarding colonialism, PNG had their fair share of European occupiers since the late nineteenth century. Germany claimed the northern half of the land in 1884 and declared it German New Guinea and was the source of coconut oil for Europe.
Meanwhile, in the same year, Britain claimed the southern coast of the land along with the neighbouring islands, and the area was known as British New Guinea. Later on in 1902, it became a part of the Commonwealth of Australia, and in 1905 became the Territory of Papua, and in the following year an official administration was initialised.
In 1914, during World War 1, the Australian military occupied German New Guinea until 1921. And of course, after the war, Germany gave up 13 percent of their colonies in agreement with the Treaty of Versailles, German New Guinea being one of them. And then in 1920, the British government obtained a mandate from the League of Nations so that Australia could govern the country, thus making it an external territory.
But then the territory would be encroached by Japanese troops in 1941 during World War 2, and Australians and papua New Guineans fought side by side to try and get rid of their new threat. The invasion by Japanese forces would actually suspend the mandate.
After Japan surrendered in 1945, the territories of New Guinea and Papua were combined as one administration, and became Papua New Guinea. However, it was still a territory of Australia. Around this time, Australian patrol officers called ‘kiaps’ were stationed in PNG and performed tasks such as checking in with villages and tribes, taking censuses, and law enforcement. Additionally, Christian missions of various denominations were also established, providing education, medical care, and spreading the word of God. Today, Christianity is the most dominant religion in the nation, with roughly 95% of Papua New Guineans identifying as Christian.
PNG was Australian territory until 1975, when they finally gained their independence. The nation has around 850 different languages, and an abundance of cultures. As it’s right on the underside of the equator, PNG has a tropical climate, being either hot and humid, or pouring down. The people are also friendly and hospitable in my opinion… based on personal experience. Oh, and they love a good get-together.
Anyway, let’s move on. So this bizarre incident happened way back in the year 1959 in one of these Christian missions. Boainai Mission, in Milne Bay— situated in PNG’s easternmost region, is the location where this encounter took place. The central person to all of this is Reverend William B. Gill, an Australian Anglican priest who was leading the mission at the time.
During the late 50s, there was an increase of UFO activity in the Milne Bay area, as chronicled in a 1960 publication of the Flying Saucer Review, volume 6, number 6. The sightings were described by another clergyman, Reverend Norman Cruttwell of the Menapi Mission and good friend of Gill. The publication detailed that there were sightings of flying lights that were initially sporadic, but eventually became frequent around Autumn 1958. People witnessed lights flying around, and even a something like a green-coloured flare was observed. And in the following year, people have reported seeing bright white orbs whizzing about. They moved in ways that regular stars or even shooting stars could not, and at times were spotted in low altitudes. One was even seen flying in front of a 1,219 metre mountain. If it were, say, space debris or a shooting star, gravity would make it fall to the earth in one direction rather than fly around like it was being controlled.
Now back to Reverend Gill. He was sceptical of the flying light phenomenon that was getting frequently reported. Though, on April 5, 1959, he saw a strange light of his own, flying over Mount Pudi. Of the sighting, he said, “This light moved faster than anything I’ve ever seen!”
Then a couple of months later in June, his assistant, Stephen Moi, claimed to see a flying saucer. Upon hearing about this, Reverend Gill was still somewhat dubious about the existence of UFOs. He wrote a letter to his good friend, Reverend David Durie, about his opinions on the matter. In the letter dated June 25th, he wrote, quote:
“That Stephen should actually make out a saucer could be the work of the unconscious mind as it is very likely…he has seen illustrations of some kind in a magazine, or it is very possible that saucers do exist, but it is only a 50/50 chance that they are not earth made, still less that they should carry men (more likely radio controlled), and is still unproven that they are solid.” Unquote.
But the night after Gill wrote the letter, an extraordinary encounter would happen that would render the clergyman a somewhat believer, not just in God, but in something else.
Gill wasn’t alone when this phenomenon happened, so this isn’t just some lone man’s crazy story. Other witnesses included Stephen Moi, teachers Ananias Rarata and Mrs. Nessie Moi (whom I believe was Stephen’s wife), and around 34 others at the mission.
On this fateful evening, Reverend Gill walked out of the dining room and looked up at the sky to observe Venus. But along with the planet, he saw another bright object in the sky. He observed it for a while, and saw it make a descent towards the mission. It descended down to what the priest estimated to be either 122 metres or 90 metres above the ground.
Upon closer inspection, the object appeared to be a strange, glowing craft of some sort. Reverend Gill drew a picture of this strange ship, and I posted that on Instagram so you can visualise it better. It was shaped like a disk and had this boat-like superstructure extruding up from it. This superstructure seemed to be an observation deck of some sort. The unusual craft also had 4 ‘legs’; comprised of two pairs on each side of the undercarriage, protruding down diagonally the way tripod legs would. The base, so the bottom disk-part of the craft, was estimated to be 10 to 12 metres across, while the observation deck was probably 6 metres in diameter. In what appears to be in the middle of the craft, there was a thin blue spotlight pointed at an angle towards the sky. This light would periodically flash on and off. The craft was also either dull yellow or pale orange in colour. It didn’t emit any noise like like a plane or a helicopter would. It was completely silent.
Moving on, the witnesses could actually just make out 4 figures that they described to be human-like. The humanoid figures were in the observation deck, at times bent over, looking like they were working on something—making repairs to the craft or whatnot. Sometimes, they’d stand upright again, and look in the direction of the people below. They’d also come and go from the observation deck and walk around.
At some point, one of the strange men on the craft rested against the waist-high wall of the upper superstructure watching the people below, and Reverend Gill waved at him. The man waved back to him, describing the gesture to be: “as a skipper on a boat waving to someone on a wharf”.
One of the teachers, Mr. Ananias Rarata, waved both his hands above his head, and two of the men waved back to him. Reverend Gill got a boy to get some paper, a pencil, and a torch so that he could record the observations of the peculiar vehicle and its passengers. The boy came back with the supplies, and gave the pencil and paper to the Reverend. Then, the boy shone the flashlight up to the craft. He lightly waved the torch side to side, and in response, the craft mimicked the movements, which astounded everyone on the ground. The kids called out to the beings on the strange ship and beckoned them to land, even pointing the torchlight down to the ground to signal the visitors. However, they didn’t respond, and it’s likely at some point later, the visitors left, because Reverend Gill later explains that the ship returns.
So, the day after the first sighting, the unknown flying craft came back at around 6pm. They would try and signal to the visitors to come land again, and this time, it appeared that the craft grew bigger as if it were teetering closer to the ground. Though, again, it didn’t land. It was as if the visitors were wanting to get a slightly closer look. It was decided that the scheduled evening service would carry on because the community believed that their friends in the sky would probably stick around while they had their Evensong. Though, by the time the service was finished, the weather turned overcast and the craft became obscured by lower-altitude clouds. They observed for about another hour, and then, at breakneck speed, the craft shot off and left.
A little while after the sightings, Reverend Gill went back home to Australia, as he was scheduled to do so. Later on in the year, on October 28th, he gave a lecture in Melbourne, to the Victorian Flying Saucer Research Society about his outlandish experience back in PNG. The society was impressed by the reverend’s story and considered it to be, in their words, “the most remarkable testimony of intensive UFO activity ever reported.”
Regarding UFOs and the mission sighting in particular, politicians were contacted to see if they are or can investigate the happenings. Roughly six months after the sighting, two Air Force officers from Canberra went to speak with Reverend Gill to question him about his encounter, but the reverend later said that they talked about stars and planets before leaving. Then the Department of Air Force Intelligence concluded, quote: “Although it is not possible to draw firm conclusions, an analysis of rough hearings and angles above the horizon does suggest that some of the lights observed were the planets, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars.” Unquote.
After the encounters, Reverend Gill went on to teach in numerous grammar schools in Melbourne, and at times would do interviews and lectures regarding the strange encounter in Boainai. People were perplexed as to why he carried on with dinner and the evening service despite the fact that the unusual craft and the four mysterious strangers were there watching them in the sky. To that, he replied, quote: “It was partly because there was nothing eerie or other-worldly about any of this. It was all so ordinary, as ordinary as a Ford car. It looked like a perfectly normal sort of object, an Earth-made object. I realize, of course, that some people might think of this as a flying saucer… The figures inside looked perfectly human.” Unquote.
Reverend Gill passed away, on the 13th of June 2007, aged 79. His last public lecture was in four years ago in 2003, where he wondered about the origins of the Boainai visitors. UFO researcher and author, Bill Chalker, was there for the event and even recorded the lecture. In his words, it was the closest Reverend Gill said to saying that the visitants were angels, a theory that didn’t diverge at all from his religious views.
So…who or what possibly were the visitors in the craft. The reverend himself believed them to be of human nature and maybe angels. Possibly, since this was during the Cold War era, it might have been a secret military prototype for a human-carrying drone or whatnot, but in this modern day, we haven’t exactly produced a craft that is this advanced… or at least that I know about.
Or maybe, just maybe, these visitants aren’t of this world. If you’re familiar with extra-terrestrial encounters, some witnesses have claimed to see otherworldly beings that look human, particularly the Nordic looking ones. Although they have heads, shoulders, arms, and torsos, it’d be a bit difficult to gauge how the passengers on the craft looked like, since people are ant-sized when they are roughly a hundred metres away. But, Reverend Gill and the others on the mission were intrigued by them rather than terrified, and the visitors didn’t seem malevolent, and in fact, communicated back to them.
When I was researching for this episode, I came across a forum discussing a theory regarding the sighting. On metabunk.org, one member proposed that the craft they saw in the sky was probably a false horizon, better known as fata morgana. According to the website SKYbrary.aero, a fata morgana is a type of mirage that happens when light waves move through layers of air with different temperatures, thus, something that is on the ground or water may look like it’s actually floating in the air; my dad saw one these once, but what he saw was a train chugging away in the sky.
So going back to this metabunk.org forum, they suggest that perhaps it was a mirage of a squid or fishing boat that the people at the mission saw; especially that night time fishing requires a ton of lights on the boat so you could actually see what you’re doing, which explains the glowing appearance of the craft. While it might seem like a plausible and rational explanation for what happened, there’s still something that’s gotten me stumped. For instance, how could a mirage respond to a flashlight’s movements by mimicking it? And also, the visitors waved back in response to the people on the mission waving at them. If it really were a fata morgana, the gestures of the people on the supposed fishing boat would have coincidentally been timed so that it appeared that they were waving back to the folks on the ground. I don’t know about you, but personally, I’m not too sure whether this mirage theory carries much weight.
At the end of the day, neither of us were there, so regarding whether this sighting was a mirage, or a bunch of people on a technically advanced aircraft, or even aliens is left for us to ponder. Though in my own personal opinion, I do think that Reverend Gill is a legit witness. His story never really changed over the years he lectured on it, and never concluded that the visitors were aliens. To me, I’d say that a priest would be the last person to claim to communicate with UFOs. But again, that’s my opinion, but I’d also like to hear what you think.
So, this conclude this yarn. I’ve always been interested in UFO sightings and encounters, though I wouldn’t exactly want to see one myself. I’m too much of a scaredy-cat for that. Have you seen a UFO? I wouldn’t mind hearing about it.
Anyway, thanks for listening. My socials and contact details are in the show notes, but I will say that I’m mostly active on Instagram, so you can follow me there primarily. Rate, comment, and tell your friends, family, and your family doctor to go have a listen to this show if they’re interested in weird topics. I look forward to seeing you in two weeks, and don’t forget to lock your doors and ignore the strange lights outside. See you soon!
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