The Cressy Cigar: Rev. Lionel Browning's Sighting, Tasmania 1960

Cressy is a village in Tasmania's Northern Midlands, about 35 km south of Launceston. In 1960 its Anglican rector was Rev. Lionel Browning.

Tuesday, 4 October 1960 was a cloudy, showery evening. Rain squalls hung over the high country to the east. A rainbow stood over the hills.

About 6:10 p.m. The Brownings were in the dining room of the rectory, looking east at the rainbow. Mrs Browning saw it first. "A long cigar shaped object" coming out of a rain squall.

It was dull greyish, with a well-defined outline. There were 4 or 5 vertical dark bands around its circumference. On top sat something like a short aerial array. Browning knew the landscape well. He judged the object to be 3.5 to 4 miles away, and about 100 feet long. It "moved on an even keel in a northerly direction at an estimated speed of sixty to seventy MPH and at a constant height of approximately four hundred feet." After about 1.5 miles it stopped abruptly. It hovered.

Then five or six small, saucer-like objects emerged at high speed from the low cloud above. They took up positions around the cigar, about half a mile out. Browning said they "skipped like stones on water." Then the large craft and the small ones reversed back into the rain squall. They did not re-emerge. The whole thing lasted about two minutes.

A local resident, Mrs D. Bransden, was quoted describing it as "like a lot of little ships flocking around a bigger one." On 10 October the Launceston press ran the headline "'FLYING SAUCER' SEEN AT CRESSY. Mysterious ships in the sky."

On 11 November 1960, Wing Commander G.L. Waller of the RAAF interviewed the Brownings for about 90 minutes. He found them "stable, responsible and unexcitable individuals," genuinely convinced they had seen real objects. The case reportedly led to questions in the Australian parliament.

In early 1961 the Directorate of Air Force Intelligence gave its verdict. "The phenomena was the result of the moonrise associated with meteorological conditions at the time of the sighting." Cloud movement and reflections, in short.

Browning did not accept it. He said he was never asked about clouds during the interview. "At no time was there cloud or scud when I saw the objects."

McDonald reached the case through press cuttings from the Victorian Flying Saucer Research Society. In 1967 James E. McDonald recorded an interview with Browning. On 12 March 1968, in a paper to the Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute in Montreal, he took the official answer apart. The full moon would have risen a few degrees north of east, not in the direction given. Dense rain and the Ben Lomond range blocked the eastern sky from the rectory. He called the explanation "entirely out of the question" and said the RAAF reasoning showed "little evidence of scientific knowledge."

The RAAF file survives at the National Archives of Australia. Keith Basterfield summarised it in his catalogue of the more interesting Australian reports, where the RAAF category is listed as "Astronomical." Bill Chalker told the story in his history of the Australian military and government role in the UFO controversy. Keith Roberts included it in Tasmania: A UFO History.

No photographs exist. No hoax was ever alleged. Today it is remembered as the Cressy cigar, one of Tasmania's best known cases. The mothership and its small discs remain, officially, a moonrise.