What happened
Driving east across the empty Nullarbor in the small hours of 20 January 1988, the Knowles family saw a light on the road ahead. They thought at first it was a truck, but it grew bigger and brighter until they had to swerve. They described a glowing object about a metre wide, white with a yellow centre, shaped like an egg in an eggcup, that seemed to jump about and follow them. Then, they said, it came down on the car's roof and lifted the vehicle; a fine black ash covered the car, the roof was dented, and when it dropped them a tyre burst. They drove off at high speed and were deeply distressed when first interviewed. A truck driver some way ahead, Graham Henley, also reported a white and yellow light too high up to be a vehicle, and a tuna boat crew in the Bight reported a strange light. The story made front-page news.
The official explanation
Retired meteorologist A. T. Brunt, investigating at the request of astronomy writer Ian Ridpath, found a pronounced temperature inversion along the coast that night and argued that refraction could have turned a distant light, such as a vehicle's headlights or a boat's lamp, into a large, dazzling, jumping image. Police and UFO groups who inspected the car found no ash; the black deposit on the front rims was consistent with brake dust, the rear tyre had burst in a normal way, roof dents were trivial and not proven new, and residue reportedly turned out to be ordinary clay and salt.
The anomalous case
The family's terror was real and immediate; they were described as hysterical when first interviewed. Their experience was not a lone report: truck driver Graham Henley, driving east ahead of them, independently described a white and yellow light that disappeared and reappeared and was too high to be another vehicle, and fishermen far out in the Bight reported a strange elongated light the same night. The family's description of an object that lifted their car and of physical sensations inside it goes well beyond what a refracted headlight would explain, and Brunt himself conceded the exact focusing effect required would be rare. A second Nullarbor sighting by a bus driver and passengers followed in October 1988 in almost the same place.
The strongest argument that this was something genuinely unknown or classified, with each claim attributed to the person who made it.
Sources
- From the archives: The 1988 Nullarbor UFO Mystery - Solved (A. T. Brunt) The Skeptic (UK)
- 14 things you never knew about UFOs, including the night one followed a family across the Nullarbor Reader's Digest Australia
Witness reports elsewhere
These archives can't be republished here, so we link to them instead.