The Tully Saucer Nest: George Pedley at Horseshoe Lagoon

Euramo lies about 8 km south of Tully, in far north Queensland. On Albert Pennisi's cane farm lay Horseshoe Lagoon. Wednesday, 19 January 1966 dawned clear, hot and calm. Pennisi later said he had dreamed of a "spaceship" landing for about a week. At about 5:30 that morning, his dog "went mad" and "raced off towards the lagoon".

About 9:00 a.m. George Alfred Pedley, a 28-year-old banana farmer, was driving his tractor along a track about 25 yards from the lagoon. Above the engine he heard a loud hissing, "like air escaping from a tyre". He got off to check for a puncture.

"Suddenly, an object rose out of the swamp," he said. "It was a large, grey, saucer-shaped object, convex on the top and bottom and measured some 25 feet across and 9 feet high." It rose another 30 feet, spinning very fast. Then it made a shallow dive and climbed away at 45 degrees. Within seconds it was gone to the south-west. He saw no portholes, no antennas, no sign of life. A sulphur smell was reported after it left.

Where the object had risen, the reeds lay in a circle roughly 30 feet across, floating on the water. Sgt A.V. Moylan of Tully Police measured it at "about 32' long and 25' wide". The grass was flattened to the surface of 4 feet of water in clockwise curves. Green at first, the reeds were brown by late afternoon. Albert Pennisi photographed the nest. The next day two more were found nearby, each about a third of the size.

Pedley reported the sighting to Tully Police at 7:30 that evening. Next morning Moylan visited the site with him and contacted RAAF Base Townsville. No service or civil aircraft had been operating in the area. Moylan's first idea, a small helicopter, fell away. Samples went to the University of Queensland, which found very little radioactivity and "nothing unnatural".

The report travelled to the Department of Air in Canberra, classified RESTRICTED. Operational Command believed "the depressions of the swamp grass were caused by small isolated waterspouts." On 11 February 1966 the Department told the civilian group CAPIO there was "no explanation for the visible phenomena reported", though it suggested down draughts, willy willies or water spouts.

Pedley would have none of it. "I've seen wet whirlwinds and dust whirlwinds. If the police believe this, let them. I know what I saw. It wasn't a whirlwind." Others offered a plasma vortex tied to Dr Terence Meaden's crop circle theory, reed-eating grubs, even ducks swimming in circles. Researcher Bill Chalker weighed each one and found it inadequate. His conclusion: "a definitive explanation currently eludes us."

The nests kept coming. In 1969 a new one appeared, 29 ft 6 in across and "perfectly circular". By 1990 Albert Pennisi had counted 22. His son Shane, 7 years old in 1966, now puts the number at over 30.

The case made national news. It drew hundreds of sightseers' cars, and newspaper cartoonists mocked it. George Pedley was ridiculed for the rest of his life and did not talk about it publicly. He died in 2022, aged 85.

In 1991 Doug Bower and Dave Chorley admitted faking hundreds of crop circles in England. They pointed to Horseshoe Lagoon as their inspiration. Keith Basterfield later reviewed the RAAF files and turned up the original police report. In 2024 the ABC podcast Expanse returned to Tully for its series "Uncropped".