Frederick William Birmingham's Parramatta Park Ark

Frederick William Birmingham was born in 1821 at Westport, County Mayo, Ireland. He was a draftsman, an alderman of Parramatta, and engineer to the council for its water-supply works. The City of Parramatta's heritage blog called him "a man of integrity and ability". But 1868 was, in his words, "a most miserable year". Fever. Rheumatism. Lumbago.

The night of 25 July 1868. Birmingham stood on the veranda of his cottage in Duck's Lane. In the air he saw the head of the Lord Bishop of Sydney, "looking intently upon me". Then the Premier's head, twice. Then came an ark.

It was "a large vessel shape moving through the air". Brown all over at a distance, with "faint, flitting shades of steel blue below". Its surface was "tremulous and like what one might term magnified scales on a large fish". It "moved in a zig-zag fashion, then quite stopped the forward motion and descended some twenty feet or so as gently as a feather". It came to rest about twenty yards away.

Beside it stood a spirit. Semi-transparent, "like the neutral tint shade and the shape of a man in his usual frock dress". "That's a machine to go through the air," it said. Did he have "a wish to Enter upon it"? He said yes.

They were "lifted off the grass and gently carried through the air". Three steps led into a steering room with very thick wooden walls. On an oilskin-covered table lay printed papers of figures and formulae. "It is absolutely necessary that you should know these things," the spirit said, "but you can study them as you go on." Somehow they were "on the highest part of the Parramatta Park". Then he looked about. "I found I was alone in the ark!" He fell into his usual sleeping state and woke next morning.

The notebook holds more. On 9 March 1873, in daylight, Birmingham watched three "Van Dyke brown" clouds in the south-west. From the middle one came "two screw-like appendages" around a turtle-shaped body. The screws "rotated about seven times". The clouds then merged into one and melted out of sight. It lasted about 20 to 25 minutes.

Birmingham spent his remaining years trying to build the ark. In 1875 he described a machine "of the ark shape" with a "pilot house". He left Washington DC on 30 May 1887, apparently after trying to sell his design. He drew "The Rover" on 29 September 1892 and died on 16 December 1892. No machine is known to have been built.

The account survived as a 15-page "Copy from the Memorandum Book", typed by UFO researcher T.V. Homan in the late 1950s. Bill Chalker received it in 1975 through Fred Phillips of UFOIC and traced it back to at least the early 1940s. In 2024, Chalker and Chris Aubeck examined the Rumsey papers at the University of Sydney's Fisher Library. Among them were six pages in Birmingham's own hand.

Birmingham himself called it a "wonderful dream". He was ill that year, and deeply religious. Chalker found "no apparent anachronism" and judged a hoax "quite remote". He left open whether the experiences were "objective or subjective in nature", noting their likeness to 1950s contactee stories. Days earlier, the death of Dr William Bland, designer of a steam airship called the "Atmotic Ship", had been announced. Chalker told the story in The Oz Files, and Keith Basterfield listed it in his catalogue of Australian cases before 1947.