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(meteorobs) MYSTERY OBJECT IN NEW SOUTH WALES
FOR ALL CONCERNED, THIS WAS THE ARTICLE IN THE AUSSIE PAPER ABOUT THE OBJECT.
Wishing for a star: Guyra hit by mystery flying object
By SIMON BENSON in Guyra
10dec99
IT FELL out of the sky, without a sound or even a flash of light.
But a "mystery object from space" which landed in the Guyra dam has left the
town agog. Nobody is sure what it is or where it came from, but the locals
certainly believe it to be extraterrestrial.
This morning an excavation team will arrive in the northern NSW town to
unearth whatever it is that has brought the town into national focus.
Authorities are still at a loss to explain the phenomenon after a local
council worker stumbled across a 15m circle of flattened reeds on the banks
of the Guyra Reservoir at 9am on Wednesday, prompting the council to shut off
the town's water and call in everyone from the Environment Protection
Authority to the RAAF.
The decision to retrieve the object was made yesterday when police divers
from Sydney discovered a 20m long tunnel under the impact site on the dam's
edge. The object appears to have come out of the north-east sky at a
trajectory of about 45 degrees sometime between Monday night and Wednesday mor
ning.
One of the few, but growing number of witnesses to the landing, truck driver
Wayne Peterson, said he saw what appeared to be a falling star about 9pm
Monday.
"It was blue in colour between the size of a golf ball and a tennis ball and
it came from an easterly direction," Mr Peterson said.
Excitement grew late yesterday when police divers emerged from the mud to
explain they had found a tunnel about 40cm wide extending into the reservoir.
Two consultant geologists brought in from Armidale – 40km south of Guyra –
believe it could have been a meteorite weighing about 5kg, about the size of
a grapefruit.
Council worker and water engineer Peter Starr, who first alerted authorities,
said at the time he was on a routine check of the dam.
"I was just walking down there and saw this thing and thought obviously
something had lobbed in there and obviously it had come from the sky.
"I told my general manager and since then they have kept us away."
Local landowner Dave Bearup said the first the town new of it was late
Wednesday.
Many of the town's 2000 people were at a meeting when sirens were sounded and
police made a public announcement of the discovery.
The RAAF, which has been conducting flight training in the area over the past
week, ruled out the object being a piece of one of its F-111s.
Other theories including the impact being caused by a piece of space junk or
frozen effluent from an airliner, were also ruled out.
Last night the water was given the all-clear, test results indicating there
was no contamination or radioactivity.
Unexplained happenings are nothing new to Guyra. Two F-111s have crashed
there in the past 15 years and there is a legend of the Guyra Ghost, blamed
for inexplicable occurrences during the 1920s.
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