Grant

It currently goes by the name of Phenomena Research Australia.

And it was originally more like bringing together of citizens with a strong background in the sciences and other disciplines.

but over the years became less of an open organization, more of a closed organization, where they would still engage in research, but were less open to sharing that research in a public way.

That wasn't their research model as it developed.

And I was able to make contact with people who belong to that organization.

One of them in particular, a UFO researcher well-known in Australia by the name of John Orchitel, who's no longer an office bearer with that organization, but still has links to it.

He's been very helpful to me over the years.

And he was able to encourage the current office holders to have some correspondence with me

and to share with me the fact that they actually have copious amounts of information about the Westall incident and their research into it from very early on, and then several years later when there were successive research trips, if you like, or visits to the site and information was gathered, data was gathered and stored away.

But unfortunately, their model doesn't allow for that to be shared with me.

And although I find that extremely frustrating and disappointing, I, of course, respect their decision.

But it is a bit frustrating.

The Vietnam War was something that loomed very much in the consciousness of Australians because Australia was involved in that distant war.

And at some point, a type of limited conscription, national service,

was brought into Australia where there would be there was a lottery system based on young men's birth dates and balls were drawn out of a barrel and if your ball with your date your birth date was drawn out of the barrel it meant then that the government would be contacting you and calling you up for national service in Vietnam

And so that involvement for Australia was a part of a wider involvement that Australia had as, as you say, part of the Western Alliance, as part of the Five Eyes countries.

But when I've talked to military people about what happened at Westall, they're certainly very aware, military historians, for example,

or people who were in the military at the time working, for example, for the Royal Australian Air Force.

Obviously, they're very conscious of all of those things that I've just mentioned.

But they're also conscious that the focus for the Australian military at the time was very much on what was happening in Vietnam.