Australian Esoteric Australian Esoteric Issue 4 | Page 18

In February 1965 a national UFO
group congregation was held in Ballarat.
Andrew Tomas was the NSW delegate and
gave a lecture entitled Purpose of Coming
to Earth. The talk examined ‘the global
exploration and the world crisis theories,’
stressing that contact between planetary
civilisations could become the greatest
challenge of all time. At the conference, a
new public group structure was formed
with the title ‘Commonwealth Aerial
Phenomena Investigation Organisation’
(CAPIO). Later the same year the
Tasmania UFO Investigation Centre
(TUFOIC) was founded.
At the invitation of Victorian
groups VUFORS and PRA, the eminent
Dr. J Allen Hynek visited Australia in
1973, spending four days in Melbourne,
followed by short stops in Sydney,
Canberra and Brisbane. During his stay in
the ACT, he was able to talk with Shamus
O'Farrell, discussing the latter’s famous
1954 Sea Fury incident. Having met with
Rev. William Gill in Victoria, who was
involved in the well-documented ‘close
encounters of the third kind’ case famously
reported at the Anglican mission village at
Boianai, Papua New Guinea, Dr. Hynek
travelled on to PNG, and undertook a
detailed on site investigation into this
famous case.
During his time here, Dr Hynek
requested that the Australian groups
forward copies of interesting Australian
sighting reports to the US-based Center for
UFO Studies (CUFOS) and, as a result, the
Australian Co-ordination Section (ACOS)
of CUFOS was established the following
year. By 1978 VUFORS, with a new and
invigorated executive in control, had the
largest membership of any UFO
organisation in the Southern Hemisphere.
By 1980, ACOS became the Australian
Centre for UFO Studies (ACUFOS) under
the control of Dr Martin Gottschall, and
UFO Research Australia (UFORA) was
formed by Vladimir and Pony Godic.
Although files on UFO sightings
had been available to Defence Personnel
(as well as Civilians Defence Personnel)
for years, they remained closed to outside
researchers. In October 1979, however, the
Air Force invited Victorian researchers to
visit the Intelligence Cell at RAAF
Headquarters Support Command in
Victoria, to view the majority files
collection and copy what they wished.
This was a significant turn-around by the
Defence Force and the start of a period of
remarkable co-operation between
government departments and civilian
groups. It was not until 1981 that a
selection of general UFO files could be
s