Now Then.

By George Simpson © Victoria

On the evening of Sunday 11th May one of our members, Jo, called me to tell me she was watching a cluster or group of unusual lights as they flew past her in Patterson Lakes, a South Eastern suburb of Melbourne.

As I live close to that region I went outside to see if I could also see what Jo could see. After a few minutes I could see groups of red/orange lights slowly moving from the West to the East as they slowly rose and faded , either becoming dimmer or moving into clouds. They looked pretty unusual, but it was obvious from their behaviour that they were not ‘Alien Spaceships’ or ‘ Flying Saucers ‘.

We were able to compare what we were watching, and count the objects and came up with similar numbers even from our different viewing perspectives and locations.

A group of us watched the lights while Jo was on the mobile phone, then we realised there was a festival happening just South of Patterson Lakes, at Carrum, and the lights could be a part of those festivities. This was later confirmed , when someone who attended the festival spoke to me at work. Clare Threlfall took a series of photographs of “ hundreds of people” who were launching Chinese lanterns as a part of the festival, and she gave me permission to use the photographs and her name in this article. Thankyou Clare for solving the riddle. We worked out what the lights were not, but now we know for sure what they were. They were very large rice paper lanterns illuminated and held aloft by small fire lighters, suspended under the lanterns with wire. You wouldn’t want to do this in the summer because the local fire brigade would probably have you arrested for arson.

Many of the reports that Auforn receives are not much more than these types of sightings, unusual or mysterious lights in the sky.

The things that are of greater interest to researchers are cases like the Arizona lights, where witnesses saw a huge wing shaped object moving silently across the local terrain, low to the ground, silent and massive. One witness said the wing span was over a mile ( 1.6 KLMS) long!


The 5th of May this year marked the 11th anniversary of the sighting of the huge translucent wing object that flew over Bendigo, Victoria , without making a sound. It’s cases like this that keep researchers looking for answers.

Lights in the sky are often mistaken for more exotic vehicles, but are only a passing interest. They are also an extremely difficult phenomenon to photograph.

I’ve had a sighting in recent years that would also have been extremely difficult to photograph. It was something I’ve never seen before or since, and as such I can only describe it. It was about 9 houses away from me, and travelling at treetop height, which in this area is just above the height of the average suburban lamp-post. It was a very dark colour, and had no lights and reflected nothing. It made no sound. It had no defining outline, no sharp edges. It resembled a black cloud, was about the size of a minibus, and was moving at about 40 klms per hour, in a Southerly direction.
This was about 4 years ago, and I still have NO idea what it was. It would be almost impossible to photograph too because of it’s very dark and indistinct outline.

Cheers.