Project Newsprint was initiated in 2015 by Adelaide-based UFO researcher, Keith Basterfield. The project was originally estimated to take one year, in which time it was hoped to collect UFO sighting reports from rural and remote Australia. To do this Keith had been contacting newspapers in various states with an appeal to readers for their reports. He also searched TROVE, an online collection of digitised Australian newspapers. Keith completed his search in Victoria and Western Australia and reported his findings for each state on his blog at http://ufos-scientificresearch.blogspot.com.au/

UFORQ president Sheryl Gottschall, volunteered to help Keith with Project Newsprint by contacting newspapers in Queensland, appealing to readers to submit their reports to this organisation. Sheryl contacted 110 newspapers resulting in UFORQ receiving 99 reports in total, 46 by phone and 53 via email. Below is a listing of some of those reports, and where possible, the source of their solicitation is included.

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Rockhampton Morning Bulletin circa 1984
I’m providing a copy of what was reported in the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin around 1984. I’d come home a bit sozzled from a party, but quickly sobered up when I saw these weird orbs, semi-translucent, and making an escaping steam sound. They seemed to perform aerial manoeuvres, within and without from each other. At one point they seemed to mimic the Southern Cross. I was surprised to find this report in the paper soon after. There was another follow-up report, which I haven’t kept, which offered an explanation, that it was fireflies. Bunkum. I don’t necessarily give over to the notion that they were extra-terrestrial, however, an explanation of an as-yet undiscovered natural “Intelligence” may hold sway.

Barraba, NSW
In 1970 I was working as a roughneck on a diamond drilling site about 30 km outside Barraba, New South Wales which was literally in the middle of nowhere. One night on graveyard shift I was high up on top of the rig pulling coring pipe when a vibrant cobalt blue light lit up the forest about 500 yards from the rig. The night up there is pitch black and the light silhouetting the trees was pulsating so I just assumed somebody was Arc Welding on another rig in the forest. I called the driller up to check it out and his jaw dropped, Holy Shit what the f___ is what he said. I told him I thought it was welding on a different rig, but he said “no way man, there is no other rig around here.” In the morning after our shift I went back to the bunk house and grabbed my Nikon then we walked into the woods where we saw the light.

We came into a meadow of long grass and quickly spotted a large round area where the grass had been burnt in a concave shape. The grass was severely burnt to the bare ground in the centre of the circle, gradually becoming less burnt at the outer edge of the circular indentation which I think was about 30 to 40 feet in diameter. The most amazing thing was the three triangular-shaped indentations at even points close to the outermost edges of the burnt circle. I shot half a dozen photos before we headed back to the camp to tell our crew boss what we had seen. He called the Sheriff in Barraba and told him our story. Naturally the Sheriff and a couple of his deputies arrived in camp about two hours later and wanted us to take him to the area, which we did along with our boss. It was then that I made probably the biggest mistake of my life — I mentioned that I had taken some pictures earlier in the morning. When we all headed back to camp the Sheriff asked if he could please see my camera. Shit, I shouldn’t have opened my big stupid mouth. He opened my camera and ripped the Kodachrome film out ruining my pictures. He warned us all that the area was as of this minute, off limits to all, under penalty of facing criminal charges.

Pilbara region WA, Maleny Range News
I’m 79 years old now, but when I was 20 my friend and I with her two young children were driving from Darwin to the Pilbara region in Western Australia. I was driving a 1954 Dodge and the trip took us 12 days. The roads in those days were quite basic, a lot of dirt roads etc, and one night we found ourselves on one of those dirt roads near the De Grey River. My friend was looking at the bush when she asked, “Is that a satellite?” At that time satellites were new to us, we were just starting to hear about them. I wasn’t paying much attention, concentrating on driving. Then she said it was getting closer, coming down. Then I saw it about 500 metres above us. It looked like a beach ball or a hot air balloon in the sky, but round, with colours moving all over it like the northern lights, no particular pattern to their movement, just swirling over it. Then I checked the rear vision mirror and saw a red glow behind us. My friend screamed and I turned off the car lights so we couldn’t be seen. At that time I started to hear what I can only describe as a big but slow piston sound, like two tones repeating slowly. By this time I was speeding through the bush on a dirt road in the dark with no headlights.

All of a sudden I saw a set of gates in front of us and I slammed on the brakes. This caused the car to stall and all of a sudden everything was quiet. The object immediately disappeared. The next thing we heard were the sounds of aboriginal people singing in the distance, I guessed it was a corroboree. My friend was deeply frightened by the experience so when we saw something again similar in 1961 while driving in the Northern Territory near Humpty Doo, she told me to turn around and go home which we did.

Then in 1957 while I was hitchhiking near Katherine in the Northern Territory, it was midnight when I saw light moving at an extraordinary speed from horizon to horizon, back and forth, up and down in a few seconds.

Grafton, Rockhampton News
As a child I lived near the navy base in New South Wales and my father and I saw lights in the sky. The next day three circles were found on the ground and everything in the area was dead. Eventually the grass grew back but it was a blue colour. On my 7th or 8th birthday I woke to find blood on my left shin. It upset me and I cried all day but I don’t understand why. Then last year I was scratching the area and a hard object popped out. It was dark brown like a dark copper colour, shiny and tubular about 5mm and flat on both ends. I put it on a little white saucer on the kitchen hutch but the
next day found it had disappeared.

When my son was four years old we were in the kitchen doing the dishes. My son said “the Sun just took a photo of my eyes”. I looked out the window and saw a cigar-shaped white object. It was daytime and I took my son outside to see it better. It was just hovering over the air force base, not as high as a commercial plane, but high. Last year when looking over the National Park I saw a massive object that looked like a plane, but it had no wings or windows and made no sound. It was like the fuselage of a plane. It was less than a couple of hundred metres from me, just above treetop height.

Injune 2013
This is one of a series of photo’s I took as I panned across the southern-most end of the Expedition National Resource Park. This happened to be the third sighting of UFOs I had witnessed in a two year period. I was not alone on the first two occasions, with one in broad daylight seen by others. This was a classic white orb seen against a cloudless blue sky, firstly travelling in a straight line before performing erratic manoeuvres and then speeding away directly upwards. The second was about 4.30am, I had people with me heading out to the airport, and we came to an intersection. When
my front seat passenger saw the light, we stopped briefly to watch as it performed similarly to the first object I had seen before speeding away. I did not realize the green was in my photo until I put the SD card into the computer. At first thinking it could be sun shining through water crystals, but when I zoomed in you could see it had a disc shape with definite thickness, you could also see that it was above the clouds. It appeared to be surrounded by wavy lines of some sort.

Wivenhoe/Somerset Dam area, Noosa News
Ten or 11 years ago my late husband and I moved to Noosa and went camping a lot. On one occasion we camped somewhere in the Wivenhoe or Somerset Dams area. My husband was a wildlife enthusiast and during the day we saw a lot of interesting wildlife, so he was excited about what we would see at night when we were planning to go spotlighting. About 7.00pm we headed off with a torch to have a look but gave up about 30 to 45 minutes later because there was no sign of any wildlife. I mean, it was completely gone. Then my husband said “look at this in the sky” and we saw three orange/yellow objects, soundless, with a rounded shape and smooth, coming right at us. They got close, really close, then took off only to approach us from a different direction. It’s hard to judge distances especially at night, but they were no higher than a helicopter at their furthest, then they disappeared. The next morning we returned to the location where we had seen the objects to get a GPS location but our equipment wouldn’t work, nor would our video camera.

Response from Noosa News:
One evening in October 2014, a man observed six or so orange lights in the sky. They were brightening and dimming, then they would disappear and reappear then flare up and repeat their performance. He found it difficult to estimate distance or height, but was certain they were definitely not planes or helicopters. He observed them for nearly one hour.

Cooran near Noosa, Gympie Times
One night twenty years ago, about 6.30pm to 7.00pm, a man observed a light shining on his backyard. He looked up and saw a huge round object about 200 to 300 metres above, approximately the size of his house. It was yellow all over with orange lights underneath. He watched it for 20 seconds then it took off in a south-easterly direction leaving a trace behind it. This witness was ex-navy and worked on aircraft carriers during his time of service, so he had seen a lot of planes, but this was nothing he had ever seen before. He reported the event to the police who “didn’t want to know about it”. The wife of the witness also observed the incident.

Connondale 1984/1985, 1am. Maleny Range News
A man reported seeing two lights about one kilometre from where he was sitting with two other adults and two children. At that distance the objects appeared to be the size of small trucks, and were flying around a tree on a hill in a playful manner. They were blue-white in colour and at times would hover then move side to side. After five minutes the objects took off.

Oxenford , 2/3 January 2016, Gold Coast Bulletin
A woman arrived home after being interstate. She looked out her back window and saw a large metallic saucer-shaped object hovering above the ground on its side near her gum trees. The object was as tall as one of her fully grown gum trees, dull grey and metallic. It hovered momentarily before taking off at high speed.

20.1.16 ABC Radio Capricornia, Rockhampton
These reports were called in while President, Sheryl Gottschall, was on air undergoing a brief radio interview.

J. from Capella 13/1/16: J was hunting in the evening when he saw two lights travel across the sky from north to south. He had seen shooting stars before but these lights were the same size as stars and travelling in formation. He observed them for 10 to 15 seconds.

R: 50 years ago late one night R saw a massive light moving very fast that lit up the clouds. It suddenly stopped for 3 to 4 seconds before taking off again. It disappeared as fast as it arrived.

Te Rapa New Zealand 1981, Gladstone Observer
A woman was living in New Zealand at the age of 20. One night she was driving home after her 4.00pm to midnight shift at work. As she got to the little town of Te Rapa she saw a white light in the distance approximately five to ten kilometres from her location. It moved very fast in a zigzag pattern towards her and within seconds it was 50 metres from her vehicle. Her radio started crackling, then her car spluttered as she pulled over to the side of the road, and then her car just stopped. She was shaking and terrified and wet herself from fear. She described the object as looking like the top of an old hills hoist clothes line, or the top of a child’s spinning top toy, but segmented with red, green and white lights all over it. Suddenly the object took off and her car started. She drove home and told her mother who took her to the police station the next day to report the event. She was informed by police that they had received other reports.

Alexandra Headlands, Maroochy Weekly
Sometime between 1975 to 1977, a man was looking out towards Point Cartwright at dusk. He saw three or four shimmering stars with different colours, red and white, just above the horizon. The lights were close together in a pyramid shape. The witness watched them for about one minute before they all took off in different directions.

Sydney, early 1950s, 7.30pm
It was a dark night so it must have been mid-year. The corner of Elizabeth and Market Streets, Sydney. I was facing South. We had just left the St. James Theatre as we used to attend afternoon sessions because of public transport for me to get home. With the crush of patrons going in both directions the crowded footpath forced me to step down onto the road proper. This placed me in an amazingly fantastic position to observe what was about to happen. “Hazel” was just behind my right shoulder because when I swung my arm through an arc following the craft she was standing just clear of my arm action. What attracted my vision I am not sure, save that I felt I saw a flash of light or a reflection to my left towards Hyde Park. My eyes swung upwards just at the exact moment as the craft passed directly overhead. Stunned at what I saw, I yelled “Look at that”. By the time I managed to get this out the vessel had passed just over the top of David Jones Food Fair towards Glebe and the Western suburbs.

If one said that they saw a flying saucer in those times one was a candidate for a mental examination as well as public harassment so I just shut up. The staggering thing is the wonder of one’s eyes and brain to absorb so much detail in split seconds with the brain to retain all the data after all this time. It had a curved metallic polished surface as the Sydney lights reflected in shades of dull red and blue. This occurred
as it passed over David Jones Food Hall, Market St. and Castlereagh St. about 30 metres across. Height: just clearing radio antennae on David Jones Store. 40 to 50 metres maximum. The “exhaust” visible trail or propulsion movement appeared to be a solid block of royal blue light about one metre across with three spherical balls contained along its length. Two were similar in size and solid blue around 1.5 metres but the middle ball’s diameter would have been I estimate 2.5 metres, which revolved clearly visible as orange and blue segments almost like the old barbers poles and large marbles but not quite the same. These were positioned about five metres apart commencing with the first bubble one-third along the trail. It is extremely difficult to describe satisfactorily. If one could locate some old marbles with built in designs it could be demonstrated or even some of the new water features with spinning globes.

There was absolutely no sound that I could ascertain due to the heavy Saturday tram and vehicle movement. There no flight paths for air traffic ever that flew down Market Street. The path of this craft would be at 90 degrees to the approach to Sydney, Mascot Airport. I have only recently seen a report of a UFO with a trail or tail so I decided to place this on full record with drawings and comments for support. I am a non-drinker or smoker just for the record. I am still capable of reading newspapers without glasses if necessary. To say I was astounded, even today, would be an understatement, but I saw what I saw at such close range it beggars belief. Especially when there were hundreds and hundreds of people surrounding Hazel and myself but none of them were looking upward. I do not know if even one responded to my alarm. I do not recall if Hazel caught a glimpse of the craft.

Another officially reported sighting : I was advised by a man who was serving in the Militia that and their vehicle broke down around Gatton, from memory, and they observed an illuminated object suspended for an extended period, “over half an hour,” which then flew South at an incredible speed. There is more to this story to be reported but it may be on record already.

Mt Isa early 1970s, Mt Isa News
The sighting was in the early 1970s, during the period of the construction of Lake Julius dam. The company I worked for designed the dam, along with all the necessary infrastructure. As such, our company also carried out supervision of all the construction work in relation to the dam. During this period, my mother visited me from Melbourne. During one of her visits, I took her out to have a look at the dam and pipeline construction. On our return from the dam site, we stopped at one of our supervision camps, which was on the Paroo River, for afternoon tea. Not long after we left the camp site, we were on the pipeline access road, heading towards Mount Isa, when my mother noticed what appeared to be a silver sphere out to the west. I told my mother it was probably a weather balloon, or overflying aircraft. However, the object stayed in the one place for the whole time of travel back to Mount Isa, which was about 40 minutes. When we arrived back on the outskirts of Mount Isa we stopped the car and got out for a look. We would only have been stopped for about half a minute when the object just disappeared, in a flash. Mother and I just looked at each other and we both said in unison, “bloody flying saucer.” We didn’t mention it to others, thinking we would be ridiculed. But, we would often mention to each other, “wonder what that thing was in the sky that day,” Unfortunately my mother has passed away since that time so I have no one to back up this story.

Brisbane 1957 (Noosa News)
A man was aged 5 at primary school. At midday, or soon after, the school bell had rung to go back to class. He began running and saw a silvery metallic saucer-shaped object. He didn’t see any other features. He tried to get some of the other children’s attention but no one else saw it. He estimated the UFO was as high as a 6 or 8 storey building, maybe a bit lower. It moved off and disappeared above a big group of pine trees some distance away, possibly half a mile.

The same witness reported staying in a hotel at Southbank in Brisbane in 2015. It was sometime between 9pm and 10pm when he observed a helicopter that flew past high above the hotel building, disappearing to the South. He then observed a string of yellow lights soon following, travelling in a line. The last light broke away at a right angle from the others, flew over the city, then stopped. It hovered for a couple of minutes, then within a short time it shot back to the others and they kept on going.

On another occasion the witness and his son were out shooting at night 6 or 7 years previously. They had a fire burning and the witness son went to get more firewood. The witness saw a bright white light travelling fast which lit up the whole area like a full moon. Then it turned dark again. They then heard two ‘massive sonic booms’. The father and son later drove off and when they reached Gayndah they were told that others had heard the sound too.

Sydney (beach), 17 December, 2015
A woman was stargazing at the beach. She watched the sky for one hour when it started to get cold. She then saw 2 flashes in the sky but was tired and went to bed. The next day about lunch time she looked out to see something flashing. It kept flashing as she watched but thought something wasn’t right. She picked up her phone and suddenly began to feel happy. She then asked the mental question – are you from last night? The flashes then seemed to respond to her thoughts.

In July 2014 the same witness woke at 5am to see a black mass in her room near her window about the size of her bichon frise dog. The mass contained multi-coloured vivid lights within it tapering to a ‘casper ghost shape’ at the bottom. It floated at window height for 15 seconds while she screamed at it 4 times to get out of her room, which it did by disappearing through her closed window. Following she got out of bed and checked her dog that was sleeping peacefully during her screaming. She woke her dog gently to check her but her dog seemed to be dazed.

Derby, Western Australia, 2am, year unknown
One evening, many years ago, a woman received a call from her friend who was having problems sleeping. So she and her daughter met up with him and they went for a walk along Roebuck Bay. Sometime during the walk they found themselves in a column of light. The next thing they knew they were walking into an encampment at 10am. The following day they had a vague recollection of the event but they couldn’t talk about it at the time. It took them 3 years to be able to remember the details of the event and begin to discuss it.

On another occasion as a child, while living at Wynnum (Brisbane), the same witness was awake at 3am with her mother, who was caring for the witness’s father who was ill. The witness and her mother were looking out the window to the rear paddock and saw a bright light like a headlight. Over the next 20 minutes the light changed into a perfect square. During this time the object was totally silent but their fox terrier dog was ‘going berserk’. The object then lifted up into the sky, hovered momentarily, then took off at an ‘amazingly fast’ speed.

The witness also reported that recently she was driving from Sunnybank in Brisbane at 4.30pm in peak hour traffic when suddenly she found herself in a yellow fog. She wondered what it was and momentarily thought she had veered off the road. The next thing she remembers is being back in traffic exactly where she was previously. She arrived home and was met by her husband asking where she had been as she should have been home 5 hours earlier. Her trip should have only taken 40 minutes.

On another occasion approximately 12 years previously, she had a friend who was flying a small plane to meet her family and friends at a property. She didn’t arrive so Search and Rescue undertook a search to find where her plane had gone down. Her friend eventually arrived in her plane 2 days later expecting to meet everyone at the planned time, only to discover she had been missing for 2 days, yet she could not account for the missing days.

At another time the witness was renting a house at Cleveland near Brisbane, when her son visited her. He had a new telescope and when she looked through it into the sky she could see a slowly rotating ball with rings on it. She called the airport in an attempt to discover what it might be and was passed on to someone else to report the sighting to. The next day two men visited her at her home with “a lot of gear” and after some inspection told her it was a weather balloon. She had no idea who the men were but they seemed overly friendly to her which left a lasting impression. After they left she wondered who they were and how they knew where she lived as at no time did she give her address while reporting the incident.

*These were the only notes taken of this witness’s accounts which require deeper investigation, but the witness did not want to leave her number or talk any longer. She was departing for an overseas trip and advised she would call back when she returned. To date we have not heard anything more from her.

North Maclean 1997 (Tamborine Mountain News)
A woman living on acreage went out the back of her house where she had a stand of trees one hundred feet tall. She observed 3 lights coloured red and white, one on top of each other, about 20 to 30 ft above the ground, then they disappeared. She thought they might have been lights from the Greenbank military camp. One week later she saw another 2 lights. Then days later she was awake in the early hours of the morning, when she observed another light for 20 to 30 seconds, about 6 to 8 inches across in front of the trees. The light was shining on the trees then it shrunk down to the size of a pen light and disappeared. Some years later when living at Mt Tamborine the witness observed the same lights over her property while looking down from the top of a hill. The lights always stayed one on top of the other. This happened two weeks in a row and the witness described them as being too high off the ground to be lights shining from torches being held by someone.

Bundaberg 1974
In 1974 during the Queensland floods, a woman and her husband were visiting her parents. As it was a hot night, the family were sitting around after dinner chatting. Suddenly they smelt a horrid smell and heard a huge noise. They all rushed outside expecting to see taillights of a plane or something but saw nothing. Then they looked up and saw a little light dancing in the sky which they watched for about one minute. It disappeared so they came inside. The witness’s husband stayed outside to watch the sky and 55 minutes later it appeared in the sky dancing again. There was no noise but the acrid smell reappeared. Again it disappeared, but the family remained outside searching for it to reappear, which it did exactly 55 minutes later. This time the light flew from one hemisphere to another in seconds before disappearing once again. This happened 3 times in total.

Childers, Queensland area. January 1, 2016 4.30am
A young woman was camping with friends and family when they observed a huge white light in the sky moving up and down, back and forth in the distance. The light was 10 times bigger than a star and round. It was a clear sky at the time. The following night the witness saw what she thought was a Min Min light. Two weeks later the same witness was with 2 friends at a beach when she observed a huge orange glowing orb in the distance. Two weeks later she was at the beach when she saw a glow in the water. As she walked towards it blue glowing orbs came out of the water and floated around her. Five of them settled on her skin and she felt calm which she later thought was strange.