Part Four - Chapter 14
Is There a Great
Cover-up?
UFOs over Oceania
Beyond Australia throughout New Guinea and Island Melanesia southward to New Zealand, UFO sightings are far from new, and beings who descended from the sky in ages past, bringing enlightenment are commonplace among the native peoples throughout Melanesia.
The Ayom pygmies of the Papua New Guinea interior, for example, believe there is a sky world similar to that of Earth. They believe that a great hero named Tumbrenjak once flew down from the sky world in a giant beetle, attached to the sky world by a rope. He spent time exploring the land, as well as fishing and hunting. However, when he went to fly home in his giant beetle he found the rope linking them to the sky world had severed.
The Keraki Papuans of the southwest coast believe there is a sky world resembling this one, and that it is inhabited by beings called Gainjin. This sky world is held aloft by a great rattan cane that prevents this aerial world from falling to earth. They fear that the great rattan cane will one day break, so during bad storms warriors stand ready to defend themselves in case any of the sky beings, the Gainjin, should tumble to earth.
The reason they fear the Gainjin is because they once descended to earth in giant houses and settled the Keraki people’s land, pushing the natives out of their tribal territory, stealing their women and pigs, as well as hunting all the animals upon which the natives depended for their livelihood. Eventually however, the Gainjin decided to return to their own world and flew back there in their giant houses. There are numerous variations to both tales among the Ayom and Keraki people, but the basic thread running through all these tales is that these primitive tribespeople firmly believe in another world beyond their own which is inhabited by other beings much like themselves.
The “Cargo Cult” may partly have sprung from these beliefs, and was strengthened during World War Two with the sight of American and Australian bombers arriving with all manner of equipment, which the natives of the interior took to be ‘gods’ from the sky world, bringing gifts meant for them, but which the troops were using themselves.
Yet, even before World War Two mystery lights in the sky, also strange airships seen by day, were claimed to fly over the Oranje Mountains [then Dutch New Guinea] and Star Mountains, which straddled Dutch New Guinea and what was then the Territory of Papua [British New Guinea].
Unidentified flying objects were still making appearances over New Guinea skies with the onset of World War Two and the Japanese invasion of the island.
During 1942 an Australian soldier Steve Ross, while stationed at Milne Bay, and while on guard duty late one night, saw a bright star-like object flying low over inland jungle terrain approaching Milne Bay from the west. “At first I thought it to be one of our aircraft coming in for a landing, but then it suddenly increased speed and shot off at a 45 degree angle to the east to be lost from sight. It was far too fast for any of our aircraft, and I doubt if it was a Jap fighter. And I also recall that the craft made no sounds whatever”, Steve told me some years ago.In another wartime New Guinea incident, another Australian soldier, Stan Keech was in the Port Moresby area during 1943, when one day, while watching a dogfight between a Lightning fighter and Japanese fighter plane about 5,000ft up, he happened to spot about a further 10,000ft above them, a silvery disc-shaped craft moving across the sky at a moderate speed, then suddenly shooting across the sky at such a phenomenal speed that it made the Japanese and Australian aircraft “stand still” by comparison. He later wondered if the occupants of the mystery airship had been observing the fighting going on both in the sky and on the ground.
In the years following the end of the war, mystery craft continued to be seen in both Dutch and British New Guinea. For example, on August 23rd 1953, at midday, an Australian Government Official Mr T.C. Drury, Deputy Director of the Civil aviation department, observed a silvery object to emerge at night from a cloud high over Port Moresby [there were no other clouds in an otherwise clear sky], and Mr Drury observed the object to be disc-shaped]. He was able to film the craft with a motion picture camera, using a telescopic lens flashing brightly in the sun as it made an abrupt right-angle turn soon after emerging from the cloud, zooming straight up with no reduction in speed.
Upon reaching a greater altitude, it leveled off again, with another abrupt right-angled turn, resuming its northwest flight it flew out of camera range.
The flashing turns executed by the craft at very high speed were made with no preliminary pauses, and were far sharper than any Earth-based jet aircraft or rockets were capable of doing at that time. Government “experts” who later examined the footage, and some 94 photographs taken from frames, declared the object to be either a bird or a balloon!