The Burkes Flat Bent Headlight Beams, Victoria, 1966

Central Victoria, autumn 1966. In January, George Pedley reported a "saucer nest" at Tully. On 6 April came the Westall sighting in Melbourne.

Ron Sullivan was a 38-year-old businessman. He was driving from Maryborough towards St Arnaud and Wycheproof in his new Ford Falcon. Alone, at about 60 mph.

Monday, 4 April 1966. About 8 pm. A straight stretch of sealed roadway on the Dunolly-St. Arnaud Road near Burkes Flat. Sullivan saw a light in a paddock to his right. He took it for the rear lights of a tractor. Then the headlights moved. In a letter of 18 April 1966 he wrote that "the headlights on my new Falcon car bent to the right hand side of the road". Towards the light. "As if they were magnetised," he later told Dr James E. McDonald. The beams veered 30 to 45 degrees, went off for a moment, came back on and bent again. Thinking he was running off the road, he swerved left and braked. He nearly hit a tree on the other side.

In the paddock, a light lifted off the ground. "Tubes of coloured lights," he told McDonald. "All the colours of the spectrum." The press described a column of coloured gaseous lights about 25ft high, shaped like an ice cream cone. He heard no unusual noise above his car, and the motor was not affected. All he felt was "A temporary mental paralysis." He did not stop. He drove about 40 miles on and had his lights checked at Wycheproof. Nothing was wrong.

Soon after, Gary Taylor, 19, was killed when his car hit a tree. It was the spot Sullivan identified as the place he had nearly crashed. Police said Taylor fell asleep at the wheel.

Sullivan went back with police from Maryborough and Bealiba. In the paddock they found a circular depression. Sergeant Suttie put it at four to five feet across and seven to eight inches deep. No human or animal marks surrounded it. The soil inside seemed rippled in a clockwise direction.

The RAAF and the Department of Civil Aviation never looked into it. In July 1967 McDonald taped a long interview with Sullivan, later summarised by Keith Basterfield. VUFORS investigator Paul Norman recovered a headlight, though from Taylor's car, not Sullivan's. Dr Geoff Stevens of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission found no evidence of exposure to a strong magnetic field.

Bill Chalker reinvestigated in 1980 and 1984. He left three doors open: a genuine UFO, "a bizarre nocturnal mirage effect", or "an extraordinary Earth Light display".

In 2024, Charlie Wiser on Metabunk proposed a fire tower. The lookout on Mt Tarrengower near Maldon, 40 to 60 km away, has been strung with lights for the Easter Fair since 1926. In 1966 they would have come on from Thursday 7 April, the date given on the McDonald tape. Others in the thread objected that "the distance doesn't match at all". Wiser also noted that the link to the crash tree rests entirely on Sullivan's own identification. And the story grew. The event lasted 4 to 5 seconds in early versions, as much as 25 seconds by 2014.

In 2014 Victorian UFO Action, led by Ben Hurle, made the documentary The Burkes Flat UFO Incident: The Tale of Two Men. A plaque on the Wimmera Highway now remembers both the sighting and Gary Taylor. Ron Sullivan died on 25 May 2019, aged 91. What bent his headlights remains an open question.