The Maslin Beach Photographs (Eric Thomason), 1993

On 10 March 1993, 69-year-old Eric Thomason set his alarm for 5:45 a.m. He wanted pictures of the sunrise and of the abandoned Maslin Old Quarry, so he took his dog and borrowed his son's fixed-focus Kodak S50. At Ochre Point, Maslin Beach, south of Adelaide, he stood on a 60-metre cliff and looked west over Gulf St Vincent. The sky and sea were grey with cloud. There would be no sunrise.

"It was then that I saw a movement on the surface on the water, and something looking like the tower on an atomic submarine emerged." As it rose, he saw three legs pointing out from the hull. The object spun. The legs drew in. It was a light grey disc, about 40 metres across by his own estimate, with several portholes.

It moved south and hovered above the old mine. Then a second, smaller object arrived from the north. It paused, took up a position beneath the larger craft and rose into a recess in its hull. Three lights were visible around the opening.

Then the disc climbed straight up and passed directly overhead. Thomason said he could feel water dripping from the craft. He had taken four photographs. He told no one. Not even his wife.

He finished the roll before having it developed and only then noticed a black dot in the first frame. Perhaps a distant airplane, he suggested, or the smaller object en route. In May 1994, after watching a UFO programme on television, he came forward and filed a report with the Australian Flying Saucer Research Society (AFSRS). His wife saw the prints and vouched for his honesty. He later said an acquaintance had the negatives sent to Kodak in Adelaide for analysis, but he was never informed of the results.

Clas Svahn of UFO-Sweden interviewed Thomason by phone and published in the magazine UFO-Aktuellt in 1996. Thomason answered questions consistently, and the photographs matched his account. But details did not fit.

Only fifteen minutes separated the alarm from the first picture. The first photograph showed bright blue sky, not overcast. A fixed-focus camera should render an object 400 metres away as sharply as the horizon, yet the object was sharp and the horizon blurred, which suggested something small and close. And his AFSRS form gave a distance of 2 km, while he told UFO-Sweden the object never came closer than 400 metres.

Svahn's verdict was stark. "Either Eric Thomason's photographs are the most astounding so far, or it's just a simple hoax."

After the article, several UFO-Aktuellt readers wrote in. The object, they said, closely resembled a plastic ventilation fitting made for private boats, though no exact matching part has been found. Some see a faint string in the first photograph. The consensus reported by writer Brent Swancer is that the pictures were staged with models, and that they are almost too clear for a novice with a cheap camera. Thomason stood by his story and insisted his photos are genuine.

No official body ever examined the case. Still, the pictures circulate in the top photo collections of UFO Casebook and UFO Evidence. In 2017 the Express asked whether they were the world's best UFO pictures ever taken. One witness. Four frames. The question is still open.