Avian Invasion: The Fernvale Incident

Fernvale is a small town located in the Somerset region of Southeast Queensland, Australia. Nowadays it is a fast-growing township with an estimated population of just over 3,000 as of 2016 - but looking at population data shows us that this was likely to have been much lower in 1927. 1927 is the year in which the incident we will be discussing today took place - when the town was briefly held hostage by a rash of sightings of various bizarre entities. Lights danced in the sky, white-suited humanoids patrolled the fields and enormous birds swept overhead like menacing shadows. The town had seemingly been invaded by strangeness of the highest order.

## Visiting Oz

According to Australian UFO researcher Bill Chalker, who interviewed the unnamed witness involved in this particular aspect of the case, the whole panic started with the appearance of some inexplicable lights in the skies above the farm property on which the witness (only ten years old at the time) was living with his parents and younger sister. Chalker carried out this interview in 1985 - almost sixty years after the actual event - and yet it seems as if the witness was still able to clearly remember what had happened. The lights had seemed to be '*dancing*' as if performing for the viewing pleasure of the witnesses, but this show soon took a dark turn when the family became aware of how it was affecting their cattle. The herd was clearly terrified by the presence of the lights, and three of their number would die under mysterious circumstances. Two pigs living on the farm would also later turn up dead with puncture marks on their necks as well as more punctures and scratch marks on their bodies. The anonymous boy was also told by his parents that similar '*apparitions*' had frightened the neighbours.

A few nights passed, mostly seemingly without incident, until the strangeness returned to the hapless farm. The anonymous boy was asleep when he was woken up by odd noises outside the house - and although his parents at first disregarded this report as being a figment of his imagination, they would hear the same noises the following night. At this point, they became afraid for their safety and so elected to keep their doors and windows locked. However, as if they had dared the phenomenon to try something - when they woke the next morning they found both doors open and footprints leading across the floor from the front door to the back. These footprints were described as resembling '*wellington boot tread*'.

Another few days later, the boy and his sister (or older brother depending on the source) were walking home from a neighbour's house when they caught sight of a brightly-lit flying object travelling through the valley. It was bright enough to light up the whole area as it moved, and it was seemingly turning slightly to follow the contours of the landscape. It would eventually come down to rest on top of a hill - and it can be presumed that the witnesses beat a hasty retreat. The next morning, however, they would return to the site to confirm the reality of what they had seen - and confirm it they did when they discovered a circle of scorched grass about nine meters in diameter where the object had landed the previous night.

The next bizarre event to befall the plagued family would take the case away from the fairly comprehensible territory of purely ufologically-based and into something much stranger. The boy was terrified to have seen what he described as a giant bird perched in a nearby tree - and his parents told him that this was the exact same thing that his neighbours had seen a few days earlier. They had told his father that '*it appeared out of the darkness*' and that it had left behind a '*poultry smell*' and feathers after it had vanished from the scene. It was bigger than any bird they had ever seen before - being approximately at least three or four times the size of the locally-present wedge-tailed eagle. This would mean that it was, as a conservative estimate, some 9ft tall. The neighbour's son had also seen the anomalous avian, and had actually claimed to see two of their strange number. He described them as gliding with their giant wings and as apparently having an '*unintelligible conversation*' between themselves. The father and sister of the primary witness (the unnamed boy) also had the misfortune to see one of the aerial abominations - they described it as '*hopping*' down the hill near their house while flapping its wings.

The conclusion to the odd flap would come when the boy came face-to-face with a strange humanoid wearing a white suit. It was entirely silent, and appeared to be equipped with boots similar to those which must've made the odd footprints found about the house several nights ago. It vanished before any decisive action could be taken on the parts of either the entity or the boy - and after this, the phenomena in the area ceased all together.

And so the question remains - what happened in Fernvale? This case reminds me of the UFO/flying monster flap that took place in Point Pleasant, West Virginia from 1966-1967 - seeing as both cases incorporated elements of UFO encounters, humanoid sightings and anomalous aerial apparitions. As far as I can tell, however, no disaster was heralded by the appearance of the so-called Alien Birds in 1927. Also, one quick note on the perhaps vague nature of some of the reports featured in this article - the main source used by all of the secondary sources I have been able to access to compose this piece is *The Oz Files* by Bill Chalker - but I currently have no way to gain access to this book and so I have had to piece together an article using only quotations from what might be a full chapter on the case. If I ever get a copy of this book, I shall be sure to update my article.

## Sources

'The Alien Bird That Terrified Australia' for *Cryptozoologynews.com*

'A Catalogue of Pre-1947 Australian UAPs' by Keith Basterfield