The Min Min Lights of Western Queensland

The Min Min light is not a single sighting. It is more than a century of them, clustered along one stretch of outback road in western Queensland. Aboriginal peoples told of such lights long before Europeans arrived. In Arrernte tradition, the mother of a child who fell from the Milky Way comes down as "big lights" to search for her child.

The European name comes from the Min Min Hotel, a Cobb & Co coaching stop between Winton and Boulia. Boulia Shire Council dates the first sighting to the "early 1890's, over the grave at the rear of the Min Min Hotel." The hotel burned down in February 1924. Only ruins and graves remain.

1912. Station manager Henry Lamond was riding at night when he saw a "bulbous ball" about the size of the moon. It floated 5 to 10 feet above the ground, moving at roughly 10 mph. At first he took it for car headlights. Then it slowly faded.

The story most often told is dated to 1918. A stockman was riding past the Min Min graveyard. "I saw a strange glow appear right in the middle of the cemetery," he said. "The glow got bigger, till it was about the size of a water-melon... it started to come towards me." He rode to town and reported it to a police sergeant. The light followed him to the edge of town.

Later witnesses describe the same thing. Fuzzy, disc-shaped lights hovering just above the horizon. Usually white. Sometimes white, then red, then green, and back again. They pace moving vehicles. They approach, then pull back. In 1914, kangaroo shooters are said to have fired rifles at them. It made no difference.

Genevieve Hammond, owner of the Desert Sand motel in Boulia, saw one with her husband. "We saw this greenish oval shaped blurry light bobbing up and down," she said. It was about a kilometre away and a metre off the ground. For about 15 minutes it moved slowly left, then came back on itself. It was "silent and very eerie." The next day her husband searched the spot. He found nothing. Around 2019, documentary maker Don Meers filmed a blue orb with rings visible inside it while camped at the old hotel site.

Neuroscientist Jack Pettigrew of the University of Queensland saw the lights himself while studying the letter-winged kite at night. In 2003 he offered an optical answer: the Fata Morgana, an inverted mirage. Cold air settles low over the flat Channel Country, and light from headlights or campfires bends over the horizon from tens or even hundreds of kilometres away. He tested it. A car was parked about 10 km out in the desert, behind a hill. Six observers saw a light floating above the horizon. When the headlights were switched off, it vanished.

Not everyone is convinced. Other suggestions include glowing insects, owls, piezoelectric effects and marsh gas, each with its own problems. Skeptoid's Brian Dunning dismissed piezoelectricity. Odd Australian History argues that most dated sightings come after a 1934 poem, "Light of the Min Min," which made the lights famous. Boulia Shire Council holds that the phenomenon "remains scientifically unexplained."

Boulia has made the light its own. The Min Min Encounter centre tells the story, and roadside signs tell drivers they may see the light for the next 120 kilometres. "Boulia is renowned as being the land of the Min Min lights," says Mayor Rick Britton. In 2016 alone, the town's tourism officer, Shelley Norton, logged four visitor encounters. Whatever it is, people are still seeing it.