Sources & Links

UFORA Research Digest, November 1991

The Claremont sighting and the Balingup sighting are also briefly mentioned in an article from The Sun newspaper on 22 August 1909 discussed HERE

Both cases were addressed also in The West Australian, Thursday 19August 1909. The article discusses the Claremont sighting, and later in the article strangely mentions ” the occupants of the vessel like the alleged one at Claremont mentioned above-spoke in a foreign tongue.” ?

The article then discusses the Balingup sighting, before going into mentioning various national and international sightings and general UFO discussion.

The scanned document at Trove is difficult to read and has been transcribed below

THE AIRSHIP AGAIN – IS IT A HOAX?
Persons in various parts of the State continue to observe objects in the sky which they convert into the appearance of an airship. Quite recently a lady in Claremont declared that not only was a veritable airship seen there by her hus- bana and herself, but that its proximity to her house was such that her spouse called out to the occupants to be careful of the chimneys, to which reminder he received a reply in some language to him unknown. The latest account comes from Mr Wilfrid Gull, a son of Mr H. B. Gull, of Guildford. Mr Gull, jun; is living on his property, Southampton, near Balingup, and he has written to his father, detailing his experiences. From the letter, it appears that Mr Gull, jun. last Saturday night, visited some friends in the district, and remained with them for several hours. After leaving his friends – the time then being nearly mid- night-he rode in the direction of his home, which is some distance away. A bright light suddenly made its appear- ance in the sky, and attracted his atten- tion. As is came nearer to him he ob- served that the light belonged to a long dark object. It was soon practically over- head, and Mr.Gull frankly confesses to the trepidation with which he witnessed it apparently descending straight upon him. Unwilling to accept closer quarters with the visitors, he rode back to his friends, and rousing them from their slumbers, invited them out to see the visi- tor for themselves. The invitation was readily accepted, and from that time right on to 3 o’clock on Sunday morning, Mr Gull and his friends remained watch- ing the object, which continued to move in various directions in the sky, and at different heights, until at the hour named it disappeared. It will be seen that the account is a very circumstantial one, and Mr H. B. Gull thought it of sufficient interest to cause him to place the details at the disposal of a representative of this journal. So many accounts have been heard of late from Pingelly to Dongarra, of an unusual appearance in the heavens, that in several quarters the opinion is gaining ground that something more than mere imagination has been at work. It is well known that during the last six or seven years, several residents of this State have been experimenting in aerial vessel build- ing, and that they have claimed for the results of those experiments considerable progress towards the solution of the most interesting problem of the day. To their own satisfaction and in some instances to that of their friends, they have demon- strated that if they had not actually reached the goal of their ambitions, they had at least advanced in that direction, and as was recently stated in these columns, in two cases at least, support of a financial character is being provided to enable more thorough demonstrations to be made. There are persons in this city who connect the alleged appearance of mysterious visitors in the nightly sky with the operations of some of these local experimenters, and argue that the silence observed by the latter affords no ground for doubting that such experiments are being conducted. There are others, how- ever, who do not regard the appearance as the result of mere experiment, but are as fully persuaded that what was seen was an airship as was those two Tas- manians who recently declared that such a visitor was seen in the Garden Island, and that the occupants of the vessel like the alleged one at Claremont men- tioned above-spoke in a foreign tongue. A resident of East Perth only yesterday forwarded to this journal an extract which, he stated, he had taken from a Melbourne publication three weeks old, couched in the following terms:— “Airships for Papua.—Strange explor- ing scheme. A New York newspaper says that the Netherlands Government and the German Colonial Office are contemplating a joint exploration of New Guinea by air- ship. New Guinea is divided into three parts, Germany and the Netherlands owning two-thirds. All former attempts by the Germans or the Hollanders to ex- plore the interior of the island have proved failures, largely because of the ferocity of the natives. Now it is hoped that by the use of an airship the explora- tion of the wild country will be made safely, and out of reach of the savage natives. Lieutenant Rambaldo, of the Dutch navy, will take charge of the ex pedition. To a correspondent the lieu- tenant, who is a trained aeronaut, said :— ‘The Netherlands Government has spent much money and sacrificed hundreds of lives in endeavoring to explore Western New Guinea, but swamps, impenetrable forests, and hostile natives have made pro- gress by land impossible. The lieutenant, who is a native of Dutch India, and a geographer and astronomer of note, pur- poses to start in an airship from the Dutch settlement of Steenboom.” While the alleged appearance of an air- ship in this State is believed in by some, others treat it with levity as being the result of a more or less romantic im- agination, or as capable of being ex- plained from the astronomer’s viewpoint. Indeed, among the latter are to be found those who point out that in the cases where it is alleged two bright lights have been seen close to each other not long after sunset, these lights are in all probability Jupiter and Venus, and that with men’s minds so persistently turned to the subject of aerial navigation by the daily cablegrams referring to the subject, a tendency to confuse the usual with the unusual might very conceivably arise. Another suggestion which has been put forward is that in some cases one or more persons have been engaged in hoaxing the good folk of Western Australia, by the perpetration of a clever trick. One suggestion in their connection is that some jocose individual has conceived the idea of sending up fire balloons, singly or in pairs-the latter being united with a length of cord and forming what is known in pyrotechny as “twin balloons.” Another suggestion bearing on the mat- ter of hoaxing the public is that what is known as the “box kite” is being flown in some of the places where the “visit” is reported to have taken place. This class of kite-a familiar one to those who have witnessed the kite-flying in Chi- nese communities–can be made of a pro- digious size, and is easily and readily illuminated, and it is suggested that a large one of this form flown in the air might well deceive the beholder at night into the belief that he was witnessing the passage of an airship overhead. Whatever explanation may be offered, there can be no doubt that the minds of many in this State, in common with the rest of Australia, have been considerably exercised of late over the airship ques- tion.

Sources & Links
Kalgoorlie Miner, Thursday 19 August 1909
West Australian, Thursday 19 August 1909

Sources & Links
Australian Flying Saucer Review, December 1966