Sights in the sky

[Allan at Wallan]

Coming home from woodworking club with a mate last
Tuesday night (9.50pm 2nd Oct) and we were in the locality
of Donnybrook Vic.

Suddenly the sky above us lit up quite brightly and faded
quickly as though someone was operating a dimmer switch.
We both remarked that it did not look like lightning as the
light had dimmed. It was as if a plane had moved over the
top of us and made a sweep of the area but there were
none to be seen.

About three minutes later a short stem of light went
hurtling to the North of us. It was orange and yellow,
did not have a tail and was not a typical shooting star.

In the next 3-4 minutes (just as we were coming into
Wallan) there were another two such lights hurtling to
the North (toward Sydney).

By this time we were contemplating stopping the car,
turning off the lights and hiding under a bush.

Radio station 3AW had numerous callers from suburbs
all around Melbourne but none from our area.

The Sun Newspaper had a very small paragraph on the
sightings next day saying it was a small meteorite.

Did anyone else share the experience?

Allan

______________________________________________

I am not at all worried about dying
... but just hope I am not there at the time.

[Buzza]

It may have been a UFT?


Unidentified Footballer Transport.


I consider you are lucky Allan, as in all my life I've yet to see any of these things, and I've spent lots of my life on the roads at night. It will of course remain unexplained to all of us.

[Skew ChiDAMN!!]

Did anyone else share the experience?

Yup, but only the one sighting. A brilliant green flash, shading to purples in the middle.... that moved across the sky waaaay slower than most "blink and you've missed it" meteorites. It was so large and bright that I thought it was a flare at first. The trail took around 10 seconds to fade from view and it wasn't an afterimage burnt onto my retina 'cos the trail stayed in the same spot in the sky when I looked elsewhere.

Just a small meteorite? I'm an avid stargazer and that's the first I've seen like that. I actually came inside and double-checked that the space shuttle wasn't doing a SkyLab.

[Schtoo]

Might have been crane bits falling back to earth?

Tuesday morning, a crane went spung just down the road from here.

Just happened to be the biggest crane Tadano make, at full extension, and they snapped the boom in half and the broken half landed on the office. Luckily, only 5 people went to hospital, and only because they snorted some dust.

Even more luckily (maybe), they were testing the thing at the Tadano factory, so if it's going to go pop, it's better to have it go bang in the backyard rather than next to some building full of people.


Anyway, first we knew something was up were the helicopters flying about. At least one, and up to 3 circling non stop for about 2 hours. There was a small jet plane doing laps as well, prolly a news company or something.

The little fella here has recently decided he likes anything that flies, so he was wetting his pants for about an hour. After that, I think he got sick of the noise or just overdosed on flying machines.


So, it might have been a bit that went into orbit, and coming back down.

Or maybe not.

[Skew ChiDAMN!!]

Maybe the site foreman was standing on a plank across an oil drum, trying to get a better view and a piece of jib landed just so....

Japanese make the best fireworks!

[Gingermick]

A flying, burning, magnesium coated duck maybe

[AlexS]

Yep, saw it as I walked down Hoddle St. Similar appearance to Skew's sighting, but it was travelling fast and only lasted about 1/2 sec, with the tail maybe 1 or 2 seconds.

Saw another in Oct 1991, but it was 3 large pieces and a number of smaller ones, travelling much slower, yellow rather than green, and audible like a high-flying jet. News reports speculated that it was space junk breaking up and re-entering.