Some Memories from Ralph Bulloch

At Perth Airport one evening in the late 1960s, prior to a radar balloon flight, I checked the screen for echoes from any aircraft in the area. There was a very large echo, pulsating as it would from an aircraft, but it was absolutely stationary. The permanent echoes were all known and it was decidedly not one of them. Thinking it might indicate a hovering helicopter I contacted Air Traffic Control (ATC) which confirmed that no aircraft were in the area. Later, they did contact an incoming Viscount asking if he would investigate a possible UFO, to which the pilot flatly refused and came straight in to land. After completing my balloon flight I forgot all about the earlier incident. Some four to five days later I was surprised to have a visit from a RAAF officer and a civilian chap carrying a very weighty briefcase. They introduced themselves and the civilian said he had come from Canberra to investigate reports of an UFO. After a bout of questioning, noting the range and bearing of the offending 'blip', they left. They returned a few hours later, said the location of the target was a local electricity power station. Then I was amazed when the civilian said "we often get them located above power stations". He also told me that a woman reported seeing something strange, rang her husband on duty at the ATC radar in Kalamunda where he tracked an unidentified signal for some time. The two investigators gave me no official reason for their visit and that was the sum total of my experience with a UFO.

It was the winter of 1951 when an early Observer (Radio)s' course was being conducted in the training premises in Victoria Street, just across the way from the 'Pink Palace' (Ed—The Bureau's then Central Office building Frosterley at 2 Drummond Street, Carlton, which at one time was painted pink). The pupils, of which I was one, were three in number and our instructor, Kevin Lomas, had us huddled around an open fire in an attempt to keep warm. We were learning the weather code. Kevin told us not to worry about the various snow symbols as we would be most unlikely to encounter a use for them. Later that day, when looking out of the window, we saw snow falling and cars were coming into Melbourne, from the Dandenongs, bearing something like a centimetre of snow on their roofs. This was considered to be most unusual weather. It was 18 years later, when once again I visited Melbourne for a WF44 radar course, that it snowed again for the first time since 1951. I began to think that the name 'Abominable Snowman' could have applied to me.

Bureau of Meteorology