Sheryl Gottschall ©2019 & 2024

On Monday the 6th December, 1999 between 2.00am and 3.00am, Brian R. had been driving his car past the town of Guyra in New South Wales, Australia. Enroute to stay with his two daughters in Queensland over the Christmas break, he came to a section of road where there were hundreds of red and white reflectors. At first it looked to him like a busy traffic intersection, but there were no vehicles other than his and a truck coming towards him a long way behind. The driver “had his big lights on” and they were “worrying” Brian. All Brian could see was a fuzz of lights ahead of him as he wondered what was going on.

Then he was struck by a red light. It lit up everything so that everything he could see looked red, blinding him. He slowed down because he couldn’t see, but he could feel heat as the light shone in the rear view mirror hurting his eyes. Brian saw the truck behind him zigzag on the road before pulling over about half a mile behind him. Eventually arriving in Ipswich, Queensland, at his daughter’s home, one of his girls asked what was wrong with his eyes which had become heavily bloodshot, and his skin looked like he had a mild sunburn. Brian had the shakes all that day and had to wear dark glasses when going out into sunlight. Two days later he heard a radio report of an object that had crashed into the Guyra Dam sometime between his experience on the 6th December and Wednesday 8th December, leaving a 16 metre long and 6 metre wide area of flattened reeds.

Within hours of the original report by the Filtration Plant Manager, Peter Starr, of an unusual pattern in the reeds on the edge of Guyra No.1 Dam, Guyra was swarming with RAAF and Army personnel, police investigators, officials from the Environment Protection Authority, and hazardous materials experts from state and federal agencies. Television and radio crews poured into the town along with jostling crowds of sightseers who were proving difficult to control. Divers with powerful lights plunged into the reservoir to take water samples, while police divers searched for the object itself, which had left a 20 metre long and 40 centimetre wide tunnel before lodging itself 4 metres deep within the soft bedrock. The object was irretrievable and eventually deemed almost certainly to be a meteorite. However, Dr Ron Barnett and John Auchettl of Phenomena Research Australia visited the site and reported that the angle of the object’s entry into the dam had been very shallow, about 45 degrees. John found no-one in Guyra who could recall hearing an explosion or sonic boom, and the surface of the reeds had burn marks which were unusual for a meteorite impact. In addition, Guyra had experienced two power blackouts around the same time.

On the 10th of December the New South Wales police called off the search for the mystery object after dragging the dam to find what had flattened reeds and left behind a deep trench.

Just prior to the Guyra incident, there were reports of cattle herding against the western boundary fence all along the Darling Downs. In one case cattle broke through the fence at Chinchilla and made their way 45 kilometres west to the township of Miles, indicating that the herd was extremely spooked by something significant. Following this report, UFO investigator Barry Taylor sent a report to the national UFO researchers email list at the time, to keep a lookout for possible low flying UFOs and animal mutilations.

Barry himself was witness to strange aerial activity only one week prior to the Guyra incident on the 29th November 1999 at approximately 9.30pm, when he was on his rear veranda observing the skies. After returning outside with coffee now in hand, he saw an array of stationary red lights in a straight line at a slight angle to the earth at low altitude, but presumed it was a light aircraft coming into land at South Grafton airport. Suddenly the lights moved with a jolt at tree top height heading east towards his location, so he immediately realised it wasn’t an aircraft because there was no sound. He grabbed his binoculars to observe them more closely, and by now they were about 400 metres from him, just above the tree tops and filling the view of his binoculars. He eventually lost sight of the UFOs over trees. Then a second identical UFO appeared, following the same path and altitude before also disappearing.

Within three days Barry saw the same thing again, but this time it was one kilometre from his location and flying deep in a gully following the contours of the land. On a third occasion another red light array craft boldly flew directly over his house just after sunset. He observed it through a tree 200 metres from his location, then it flew down a ridge following the contour, so he started his video camera in the hope of the UFO rising again, but it never did.

One week later Barry visited Guyra on Wednesday 8th December. On arrival he dropped into the local hotel in the hope of speaking to residents about the Guyra incident and the location of the reservoir. From there he drove to the main reservoir entrance, which by then was barricaded to keep the public out, and surprisingly upon announcing he was a UFO researcher from Grafton come to investigate the incident, he was allowed through to the control centre where he observed sketches and aerial photographs by the scientific team on site. Here he was given a tour explaining the evidence collected so far. Browsing over the photos it was explained how the object came in at an angle, and that the trench the object forged had an entry point the size of a door, which was a different size as opposed to what was reported to the news. In addition, the reeds in the dam were cut off and floating on the water.

The evening that Barry returned from his trip to Guyra, he observed and filmed three white objects in a large triangular formation that appeared to be over the Guyra range moving to the north at low altitude. His impression was they may have been surveying or observing the location of the Guyra UFO incident.

During that week Barry observed RAAF jets loitering in the Grafton to Coffs Harbour area. Another UFO report came from a woman in the coastal town of Coffs Harbour, who called to report she had witnessed two orange lights slowly moving over the coast out to sea and subsequently called the RAAF to report them. She stated that within two minutes two RAAF jets arrived and circled the area before flying off inland towards the west. Barry also witnessed and filmed one of these jets slowly flying at a low altitude south of Grafton.

Another mysterious report from the area occurred on Monday 6th December, when a couple arrived home from work to find their dogs barking incessantly out the back of the house. The man called the dogs and they came running. He thought nothing of it at first, but the dogs returned to the back of the house and continued to bark, so the husband went to investigate further. To his amazement he found their cows had run a 1.5 metre barbed-wire fence down. He stated that for cows to have done that something must have “scared them pretty badly”. He said, “I have never had any of my cows do this before and I’ve lived here for the past 18 years.” Their dogs kept barking for hours afterwards as though something was still out there, but the couple never saw anything.

In addition, reports of an orange ball with a long tail were received from Brisbane, Gold Coast, Warwick, Texas, Armidale, Glen Innes and as far south as Menton in South Australia, yet witnesses heard no sound. Many other descriptions of mysterious objects seen around this time were reported to the Brisbane-based organisations, UFO Research Queensland and the now defunct AUFORN.

The meteorite theory still persists to this day yet the object that entered the dam was never retrieved. There were no signs of the soft bedrock exploding on impact and questions remain as to how the reeds near to the side of the dam were flattened, but there was no wave wash onto the banks of the dam. Also curious is the high level of interest by the Air force, Police and Environmental Protection authority in a simple meteorite impact. Then there’s the many UFO reports for weeks leading up to the incident to consider, plus reports of cattle herding and breaking through barbed wire fences.

And what of the RAAF jets loitering along the Grafton to Coffs Harbour area during the week following the Guyra incident? And what was the red light that struck Brian R. leaving him with sore eyes and a sunburn as he drove past Guyra on that fateful night? It is my opinion that while some aspects of the Guyra incident may fit a meteorite impact, there are many other aspects that don’t and we may in fact be looking at a multiple UFO event. However, the Guyra incident has come and gone like many others before it, leaving it to disappear into the annals of UFO history, and the intergalactic intruder will remain forever a mystery in the bedrock under the dam..…or will it?