An extraordinary and controversial milieu has developed around events that reportedly began late on the evening of Thursday, October 4th, 2001, at a Gundiah property near Tiaro, culminating in the early hours of Friday, October 5th, 2001, and then played out in the glare of rapidly escalating media coverage.

Three people were directly involved in these alleged events. Keith Rylance (40), his wife Amy (22), and their business partner, Petra Heller (39) were on their property, which was being developed as “Whispering Winds” winery. Other potential activities were also being developed at the location. The following account comes from interviews conducted by us with them, along with primary source material such as TV interviews.

Keith Rylance told us that he had gone to sleep in the caravan bedroom at about 9.30 p.m.. Petra retired to her bedroom in the caravan annex. Amy stayed on a couch watching TV in the caravan annex

			The location of the main bedroom to the loungeroom
		“lounge room”. Each of these locations were in close proximity, separated by a window and wall respectively from the lounge room. Petra’s room had a door leading to the lounge room, which was left ajar. The door to the bedroom, where Keith was, apparently was open to the lounge room. Amy apparently fell asleep on the couch. A storm was in the area. Around 11.15 p.m., Petra was reportedly woken up and when she entered the adjacent lounge was confronted by an extraordinary sight, that allegedly quickly overwhelmed her. A rectangular beam of light was being projected through the open window of the caravan lounge room. This light beam appeared to be truncated at the end.
		Inside the beam Petra claims to have seen Amy in a sleep prone position, being carried out head first through the window. Underneath her, also within the beam were the items that had been on the coffee table adjacent to the couch Amy had been on. Before apparently fainting in shock Petra saw that the beam was coming from a disc shaped UFO hovering just above the ground a short distance away, near a tree at the rear of the clear section, immediately behind the annex caravan house.
	Petra reports she believes she was only in a faint for a very short period of time. Regaining consciousness, she began screaming. Keith reports that he was awoken by the commotion coming from Petra. As he came from the caravan bedroom and stepped down into the lounge room annex Keith claims he was confronted by the sight of a highly agitated Petra and the contents of the coffee table on the floor in front of the window. He told us that he soon realised that the window screen was torn in both a vertical fashion and along the bottom of the window frame. Keith indicated that initially he couldn’t get any sense out of Petra who was crying and very agitated, so he rushed outside trying to locate Amy. She was reportedly nowhere to be found. Keith states when he started to be less agitated himself he was eventually able to get from Petra an idea of what happened. Keith claims he initially refused to believe what Petra was telling him. He said he rushed outside again trying to find his wife. Eventually as the situation became clearer, Keith indicates he decided to call the police. Keith call the Tiaro police around 11.40 p.m. reporting that his wife had been abducted and imploring that the police should come out.
						A view of Petras bedroom door from the front of the annex
		The manning status at that time meant there were some delays in the police coming out, but about hour and a half after the initial call Senior Constable Robert Maragna from Tiaro and an officer from Maryborough arrived at the site. Initially police thought they might have been walking into a situation involving foul play, even perhaps a murder scene, but then the bizarre circumstances of the alleged events came into focus. The two people, Keith and Petra, at the Gundiah property were claiming that Amy Rylance had been abducted by a “spaceship”! The officers were struggling to keep an open mind. They were joined later by Sgt.. John Bosnjak, the officer in charge of the Tiaro police. He had been asleep when the police called him to assist in the investigation. The three officers continued their investigations at the site. They confirmed that Keith Rylance and Petra Heller appeared to be in an agitated state and that there was no sign of Amy Rylance. The torn screen was examined. A flowering bush, commonly known as “yesterday, today, tomorrow” was located immediately outside the left side of window, had indications of possibly being affected by heat or another mechanism along its right side. Oddly another flowering bush, a hibiscus, located immediately on the right hand side of the window area was not affected in the same way. The police took samples for possible later testing.
				The couch where Amy fell asleep and a view of the loungeroom from Petras bedroom door