Grant

And resources were stretched very thin.

The work of the intelligence services within each of the branches of the Australian military, the Navy, the Army and the Air Force, were all very much centred on what was happening in Vietnam and supporting Australia's involvement in that war.

And so, in a way, it makes that rapid response to Westall on the day of the incident by apparently elements of the Australian military

almost difficult to comprehend because for the most part in Melbourne in 1966 there were no Australian military elements that had a rapid response capability.

And yet if you listen to the witnesses and if the witnesses who tell this story of the military responding so quickly

have the timeline right.

And of course it's difficult to get things like timing, chronologies right after such a long period of time.

But even if they're approximately right, that the military perhaps turn up not in 20 minutes, but in 40 minutes, or not in 30 minutes, but in an hour,

it's still a rapid response.

And Westall was a good 45-minute drive in those days, probably from the centre of Melbourne, where the Australian Defence Force was headquartered at that time.

And so it raises the question around how the Australian military elements had the ability to respond so quickly

And as you're really asking me why they responded so quickly.

And of course it raises the specter of, well, they were on the lookout somehow for something happening, that perhaps something had happened in the hours or days before, uh, somewhere in Australia or near Australia.

that had alerted the Australian military to there being the possibility of something flying in, something that needed to be watched.

And that something, of course, may have been something from one of our allies, be it the Americans or the British or someone else, or perhaps more pertinently from Australia

uh someone not an ally so of course at that time we're basically talking about the soviets really but it could have been somebody else it could have been some other nation or it could have been something someone that wasn't a nation that was more of an unknown and that is what was being watched that's what they were on the alert for and i haven't been able to solve of course

that question and it's still very much an open question but it's what makes the Westall story so fascinating that at some level some element of the Australian government certainly and the Australian military within the government had an interest in what happened at Westall and wanted to be there and to respond and we do know that there was a very high ranking member of

a very important federal government department called the Department of Supply, which in more recent years has been subsumed into the Department of Defence.

But in 1966, the Australian military had three separate

civil departments that looked after it.