Australia So Much to See

Have you seen the Light? If so, I would love to print your description (with or without your name as you prefer). Please email me through the Contact page.

As a young bloke driving back across outback NSW towards Mildura in 1981 I encountered something that I could only attribute to being a Min Min light. It was about 2:00 a.m. on a very crisp winter’s night on One Tree Plain (Hay Plains). There was a very bright light that I at first thought was a semi but after 10 minutes it got no closer to me.

I thought spot lighters, a station property and even Venus rising but it was none of those things. While it was bright, it wasn’t blinding. I stopped and watched it for about 20 minutes and it neither moved nor dimmed. It could have been 200 metres from me or 2 kilometres or further off, it was impossible to tell. Driving on, it disappeared as if someone had simply turned it off.

Eerie indeed but not frightening. While not in the vicinity of Boulia, it was a similar unexplained phenomenon none the less.

P.S. I didn't drink back then either!

Mick

Back to top ^

Use your browser back button to return to the page you were reading

Sometime around 1970 I was travelling on a station track on one of the most northern Willandra Lakes, S.E. of Pooncarie, S.W.- N.S.W. accompanied by the station owner.

We both saw a constant white light off to our left, and though we were not travelling fast it maintained our speed. When we stopped, it stopped.

I thought for a while that I was a motor vehicle following us on an adjacent track, but my companion said that no tracks existed in that area, other than the one we were on.

I stopped the vehicle and we both got out and walked towards the light, it maintained it's distance, and we couldn’t reach the source. There was no sound, and though the night was clear, I don't recall whether it was hot or cold. It certainly wasn't raining as the far west of NSW was in a serious drought at that time.

We both started to get the wind up and decided to head back to the homestead. Afterwards over a couple of beers the grazier told me that he had seen a similar phenomenon some years previous.

The following day we returned in daylight to where we saw it. We could see our wheel tracks and footmarks, and we walked the ground. There was no sign of any vehicle tracks, and as the lakebed was rough ground I doubt if anyone would have driven over it. So that discounted a shooter who was trespassing.

dickwho

I worked on Brighton Downs on Diamantina River from Easter ’67 till about Easter ’68. Over that time we probably saw Min Min lights on two separate occasions. The winter of ’67 was particularly cold, after some rain in June. On one night, we were camped up on the north west boundary, and by 4 am any water in pannikins or washing dishes was frozen solid!!! No wonder everyone was up and around the fire. With such conditions, the atmosphere would have been very conducive to Min Min sightings.

The one sighting I remember was when we were camped at Gidgea Hole, on the western side of the Diamantina. Someone noticed a light south south west of our camp, and one of the older ringers said it was a Min Min light. Two of these old blokes (one was 52, the other about 48, but as I was only 21 they seemed “old”) were returned servicemen, so after what they would have seen, were pretty blasé about this occurrence.

The light was visible for maybe twenty minutes, and while it didn’t move to either side, it did vary in intensity, almost fading away, to suddenly becoming bright again. This variation in intensity probably happened at least two or three times. The colour of the light, as I remember it, was more yellow than bright white. We were camped at Gidgea Hole a number of times that year but didn’t see the light again. When the light was bright, it appeared to be only a click or two away, but as it became dull, the distance appeared to increase.

In January ’88, I returned to Brighton Downs as manager and we were there for 21 years. Over the years we saw numerous mysterious lights, but in most cases, these could be explained by “so and so” travelling down the River Road, and such like. However there was always the odd one that couldn’t be explained………..I wonder?

Bob Young

I had the experience of a Min Min Light whist driving a truck late one winters evening around 1989 on the Normanton to Cloncurry Road. It was about 2 am on a clear winter night on the way from Normanton to Mt Isa. We first spotted the light just after hitting the plains around forty kilometres out of Normanton and it remained in the far distance to the south west of the road. As we drove, it remained out in front of us to the South West, always staying the same distance away. As to that distance, at times we thought maybe it is close and at times we though maybe it is far away; we could not actually estimate where it was. At first we thought it may be a vehicle on a station track or a pig shooter the other side of the Flinders River. When we crossed the Flinders River the light remained, so that put that theory to rest. There are very few tracks in the area. Thinking back, the light was certainly visible for at least as far as the Bang Bang jump up 110 kilometres out of Normanton, as I recall it vanishing only when we hit the hills, it is possible that it was the hills nearer to Cloncurry a further 100 kilometres along the road. Whichever one of these two locations it was, the light certainly followed us for a very long way. It was a slight way above the tree line when trees were around, so maybe fifteen degrees above the horizon.

My passenger and I tried to come up with numerous explanations of what could it be. In the end we just put it down to a possible Min Min.

Tony Bristow-Stagg

Going way back to around 1976 we were driving very late on a warm clear night through flat farmland country in western Victoria. We didn't see another car on our journey, but there was a bright flying object following alongside us, about 30 degrees up from the horizon and 500 or more metres away. When I stopped, it stopped. When I drove off, it followed. No, we didn't smoke that funny stuff. This went on for miles and probably lasted around twenty minutes, and were we scared? You betcha.

We eventually got past this unusual happening, and pulled into a reserve to sleep the night not far from a town. Jumping into the back of the Panel Van and laying there for a while, something was walking on our roof. I jumped over the seats, started the van and feeling a bit safer, I did a few donuts and figure eights while looking for whatever.

We didn’t see anything, but no way were we staying there for the night. I drove into town and settled for the safety of the caravan park.

Probably a possum in the reserve, but still undecided about our UFO encounter.

Rick and Cindy

On our travels through Western Queensland in August 2006 we visited the small town of Boulia where there have been many sightings of the mysterious Min Min Lights over the years. So many in fact that the town has turned them in to a tourist attraction and they have a fantastic facility dedicated to the lights. The Min Min Centre is an interactive display where real accounts of sightings by a variety of people are portrayed with an amazing amount of realism. How do I know these displays are realistic? I've seen the Min Min light!

Way back in 1968 I was working as a wool presser on a shearing team in the Pilbara area. We had just finished shearing at Roy Hill Station and I was leaving the team and heading home to Perth. In those days the only transport organised for you was a ride out to the main road where you were left to hopefully hitch a lift to where you wanted to go. Waiting on this cold and clear night as traffic along the Great Northern Highway which was a dirt road in 1968 was sparse, so it was some time before I managed to get a ride with a young truckie driving a flat bed truck. I was in luck because he was going all the way to the city.

It was a long boring drive and as night fell the conversation dried up somewhat. Not being able to sleep sitting up in the cab, I was staring blankly out the side window just watching the dark shapes of the trees and shrubs go by. The orange glow of the side lights on the rear of the truck reflected back at me through the window. Half asleep, I suddenly had the feeling something wasn't right with what I was seeing. Wait a minute! Reflections don't go behind trees! I watched for a few minutes and an orange glowing light, brighter than the reflected side lights was definitely travelling behind the trees. I pointed this out to the truckie who immediately dismissed this as my eyes playing tricks on me. He took some convincing to agree with me that something wasn't right. To put an end to this aberration he slowed the truck. The orange ball of light slowed as well. Slower still and the light followed suit, still disappearing as we passed trees. It appeared to be around fifty metres from the truck and travelling one or two metres above the horizon, and it disappeared behind a small hill we passed in this otherwise flat terrain.

We were down to a crawl when suddenly the light lifted into the air and, moving forward over the tops of the trees, set down on the road about a hundred metres in front of us. The driver stopped the truck! We sat for several minutes watching this glowing orb, around a metre and a half in diameter hovering about one metre above the road. A quick discussion and we decided to move slowly towards the light to get a closer look and ascertain what it was. We crawled to within twenty metres of it when it suddenly shot upwards at great speed, hovered momentarily at about thirty metres, then took off over the trees on the right side of the road at blinding speed. We watched as it quickly disappeared over a hill in the distance, leaving us sitting in the middle of the road, jaws open, not quite believing what we had just seen.

Well there was no shortage of conversation for the rest of the trip. We spent the rest of the night and the next day theorising about what we had seen. Of course a UFO headed the list - well that's exactly what it was, an unidentified flying object. Later that day the truckie dropped me off in Midland on the outskirts of Perth and went on his way. I haven't seen him since.

Over the next few weeks I recounted the incident to anyone who would listen but mostly I was met with disbelief and so I stopped telling the story. Years later while working for MacRobertson Miller Airlines, I told my story to an old pilot who had spent many years flying in the North West and he recounted incidences of pilots having an orange ball flying along side their aircraft at night. I have read a few theories about mysterious lights over the years, none of which fitted what I had seen. The Min Min Light display at Boulia finally made sense of what I had seen.

Doug

Want to know more? Ask us

In early 1955 I worked on a place out of Weemelah in northern New South Wales. The name of the place was the Booreeyamma Pastoral Company and it consisted of two outstations, Ross Common and Booreeyamma with Barakee the main homestead. The manager was Bob Frost. It was my first job after leaving school. Myself and an old bloke named Jim Williams were told to muster a paddock of bullocks, there were supposed to be eighty in number. The paddock was up towards the old Neeworra shanty and Whalan Creek ran through the paddock. It was around March or April and late in the day, going on sundown when we had control of the bullocks but there were only seventy six. Jim asked me to hold them up in a corner and he would ride in and see what Bob Frost wanted us to do with them. Barakee was possibly four or five miles and Jim was away a fairly long time.

While trying to hold these cattle I saw directly down the fence line a light on the horizon and naturally thought that it was Bob and Jim coming in a vehicle, and I thought them about a mile away. The country is flat and open. It was a white light and seemed to be moving but after a good length of time was no closer but still on the same line. Sometime later I saw it in another position and I would say now probably twenty to thirty degrees off the fence line, still the same light and still seemed to be moving. I watched the light for twenty or thirty minutes maybe. I did not notice it shift to the second position. If it was not for the fence line I may not have realised it had shifted. Some people describe this movement as dancing. There was definitely no road or track in this second area.

Finally Jim turned up still riding a horse and said we were told to let the cattle go as Bob wanted the eighty. This pleased me as I know I had lost a few more. I asked Jim if he had attempted to come back in a vehicle and he said no. He enquired why I asked and I told him about the light. He quite nonchalantly said it was probably a Min Min light and left it at that. I had heard of Min Min lights so that satisfied me. We mustered the same cattle a couple of days later and got seventy nine and I found one dead.

One thing that did not strike me at the time but did later, there was no light beam from this light.

I have worked most of my life in the Australian Bush and in some really remote locations. I have seen lights that at the time I thought were strange or were in strange places but never had the inclination or time to investigate further.

In the year 2000 late in March or into April, while a Contract Supervisor for Power and Water Alice Springs, I was on the Barkly Highway east of Soudan Station and went looking for O’Reillys Bore which was a bore on the Barkly Stock Route. In that time the bore was situated only a half mile or so off the then bitumen. With the repositioning of the road I had never sighted this bore again as I drove to Queensland. I found this bore and camped on the jump up probably two or three hundred metres south of the bore. It was a clear night and I saw lights appear a long way off in the southeast. The terrain is flat and open. You could only view them for a few seconds of time and in only a couple of different positions. At first I thought it could have been lightening but then decided they were car lights. I watched different ones for an hour or more and what I remember was you could see the light beam as well as the light. The beam at times as the vehicle moved over dips or gullies picked out different silhouettes against the skyline. I had good topographic maps with me and reckoned next day, if my memory is correct, the distance was twenty one kilometres.

My philosophy has always been that everything has a logical explanation whether I know what that explanation is or I don’t.

Ian Chisholm

Thank you to all who have shared your Min Min light sightings with me. Sometimes this has come after many years of being afraid to speak about it in case others thought you a little crazy. You now know that what you saw is perfectly normal and it was the luck of being in the right place at the right time. You were very privileged to witness a Min Min.

Continue reading >