The "Sea Fury" Radar-Visual Incident near Goulburn, 1954

In 1954 the Royal Australian Navy flew Hawker Sea Fury fighters from its air station at Nowra, HMAS Albatross, about 160 km south of Sydney. On the evening of Tuesday 31 August, Lieutenant J.A. "Shamus" O'Farrell, aged 25, was out in Sea Fury "921" on a night navigation cross-country. Nowra, Young, Temora, Yass, and home.

At about 1910 he called Nowra from high above Goulburn, indicating 220 knots. Then, in his words, "I noticed a very bright light closing fast from 'One o'clock'." It crossed ahead of him and settled on his port beam, where it "appeared to orbit." A second light appeared at nine o'clock. It passed about a mile ahead and turned into the first light's position.

"Their apparent crossing speed was the fastest that I have ever experienced," he wrote. He saw "a vague shape with the white light situated centrally on top." A dark mass, quite big. No navigation lights, no aircraft features. Years later he spoke of two dark, cigar-shaped objects about the size of a Dakota.

Then the two lights reformed at nine o'clock. They disappeared on a north-easterly heading.

At Nowra, Petty Officer Keith Jessop checked the GCI remote display and saw two paints at "approximately 280 degrees 32 miles." About 15 seconds later came a third. One tracked towards base, while the others moved in a north-easterly direction. As O'Farrell remembered it, the controllers asked which one he was. Jessop later put it simply: "it would have had to be something."

O'Farrell landed at 1930. A Surgeon Commander examined him and found him fit. Later accounts added two ground witnesses, one at the Marulan beacon and one in the Mascot tower, though no 1954 document records them.

The Navy kept quiet for about three and a half months. Then the story reached journalists travelling with the Navy Minister, and in December 1954 Minister Francis confirmed it. "The lights passed ahead of him at very fast speed." Newspapers in Sydney and Melbourne ran the story.

The Directorate of Naval Intelligence judged O'Farrell "an entirely credible witness." The RAAF and the Joint Intelligence Bureau investigated, but the bureau's files have never been found. In 1973 J. Allen Hynek interviewed O'Farrell. Bill Chalker quotes Hynek as saying: "Your sighting cannot be explained away."

Keith Basterfield later located the Navy files and found a gap. Nowra had told O'Farrell to turn 180 degrees so he could be identified, but Jessop logged the reply as "NEGATIVE," so nobody ever established which paint was the Sea Fury. A TAA Convair was also in the air at 14,000 ft on a northerly course. One researcher proposed RAAF Sabre jets, but critics pointed to the missing navigation lights and the lack of aircraft features on so close a pass. Basterfield also noted that the cigar shapes and the ground witnesses appear only in later sources.

Chalker obtained the Navy file in 1982. In 1993 The Extraordinary reconstructed the night, interviewing O'Farrell, Jessop and Chalker. O'Farrell went on to become a Commodore. Basterfield's 2017 verdict still stands: "Despite all previous research, the nature of the 'unknowns' has never been resolved."