The Tully Saucer Nests
The account
A farmer saw an object rise from a lagoon, leaving behind a perfect circle of flattened reeds.
What investigators found
Proposed explanations range from whirlwinds to natural phenomena in the water; the case was never solved.
The story
On January 19, 1966, farmer George Pedley was driving a tractor near Tully, in north Queensland, when he heard a hissing sound and saw a grayish object rise from a lagoon and disappear into the sky. At the spot, he found a circle of flattened reeds, all swirled in the same direction, floating on the water. More circles were found nearby over the following days.
The press dubbed the marks "saucer nests," and the Royal Australian Air Force even looked into the case. The most cited explanations are whirlwinds and natural effects on the lagoon's vegetation, but none was ever confirmed. For many researchers, Tully is one of the earliest modern records of circular marks linked to UFOs, a kind of forerunner of the crop circles that would appear decades later.