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tions on and combinations of the following actions: very-low-alti- four white lights raced apart from the centre of the main "object" tude; nap-of-Earth trajectories; small-to-nonexistent tails; no frag- and formed a right-angled white cross in the sky. No actual object ment drop-off; apparent velocity often very slow and commonly was seen at any time—just a bright orange-red fireball of light less than that of sound; no associated sonic booms; considerable emission and its very small blue-white-light conical tail. and sudden changes in course, as well as speeding up, stopping One observer reportedly told the Perth Astronomical Observatory dead, reversing course and flying vertically upwards into space; of seeing sparks drop off the fireball during its flight and that it had creation of intense vibration of ground and housing during flypast; a long tail or streak of orange colour. All other police and public explosion in massive blue-white arcing light displays with major eyewitnesses reported that the fireball had no tail (or, at best, a explosive sound events or silent, intense light-flashes; regular cre- rudimentary, very short tail) and that they definitely saw no sparks. ation of power generation overvoltage outages and other electrical They noted that it was spherical or cylindrical in form, as defined effects. by light-energy emission. The Banjawarn case demonstrates a cause-effect relationship About half the city's population, some 500,000 people were esti- with a 3.9 Richter-scale earthquake, and other fireballs have possi- mated to have been woken up by the violence of this explosive, bly been related on at least two occasions to 3.0 to 4.0 Richter-scale seismic-wave event. The ground vibration wave was picked up by earthquakes in eastern Australia. the AGSO Mundaring Seismic Observatory as a paper analogue If meteors are the source of these observations, then lately we recording lasting some two minutes, timed at 17.57 UTC, i.e., com- appear to be continually encountering a very odd species of meteor mencing at 1.57 am WA time. that exhibits a previously undocumented, very exotic behaviour and This event raised some discussion in the WA press over the next a very high statistical rate of arrival in Australia, apparently (until few weeks and was generally explained in the media by the Perth recently, i.e., 1996) largely ignoring the Astronomical Observatory as the explo- rest of the world. sion of a meteor fireball with a power Other possible causes such as natural- . of one or more megatonnes of TNT gas fireballs, min-min lights and earth- Now, for three fireballs to be equivalent, at an altitude of several quake stress lights may be easily dis- heading towards Banjawarn is kilometres. Surprisingly, this event counted by many aspects of these multi - was apparently not widely reported in ple fireball events—but not least just too much of a coincidence the world press. One would think that because of their usually very-low-ener- something with a force level equiva- gy output when compared to the very for a meteor-type event. lent to a large hydrogen bomb detonat- large energies involved in these recent ing above a city like Perth would be Banjawarn fireball incidents. worthy of great discussion. Obviously However, possible scenarios such as it was not loud enough to wake off-planet alien UFOs, or Earthbound powers testing new exotic Canberra... power-plant, military spacecraft and/or EM weapons systems, can- Reports soon came in of small lights and strange aerial noises not be so easily discounted. that had moved to the north-northeast of Perth towards the small £ wd hav an tha A Ame teeta — ete Canberra... Reports soon came in of small lights and strange aerial noises that had moved to the north-northeast of Perth towards the small town of Toodyay and beyond, on the night in question. Amateur meteor astronomers spent a considerable amount of time interview- ing farmers out that way but no meteor fragments have been recov- ered to date (December 1996). Later reports noted that on the same night, some 1,900 km to the north-northeast of Perth, a couple situated on Sunday Island, near One Arm Point north of Broome in the Kimberley region of WA, were woken some time around 3.00 am by a loud, roaring, pulsed diesel-engine noise, "similar to a D9 bulldozer or tank engine", advancing directly towards their front door. This noise rose to a crescendo and books and objects fell from their shelves. The seis- mic ground-vibration wave and sound event lasted for one to two minutes. Believing they had experienced an earthquake, the family lis- tened to the early morning ABC radio, but the only story was of the explosive meteor fireball event above Perth. A check of the Mundaring seismic records has shown that no earthquakes of any magnitude at all occurred at Sunday Island or anywhere else in their region that night. One possible interpretation of these events is that a meteor fire- ball exploded on contact with the Earth's denser atmosphere high above the east of Perth and that small fragments, including a very large fragment, flew north-northeast over Toodyay, eventually to be heard flying low over Sunday Island in the Kimberley region. This meteor interpretation ignores the fact of the fireball's slow speed, reportedly similar to that of a jet plane. Due to its roaring sound being heard before it arrived, the fireball apparently travelled at less than the speed of sound at some 750 mph. Most meteors are generally hypervelocity objects flying at many thousands of miles THE PERTH FIREBALL EVENT Probably the most spectacular of these fireball events was that which occurred at approx. 2.00 am on 1 May 1995 above Perth, WA. At that time, a large spherical orange-red fireball with a small conical blue-white tail was observed as it flew from the Indian Ocean over Bunbury, in southwestern WA, in a north-northeasterly direction at a relatively high altitude, apparently with a trajectory that was parallel to the Earth's curvature. The altitude of this fire- ball is open to question as many observers thought that it was not very high in the sky, but newspaper reports later placed it at several kilometres in altitude. The fireball soon arrived above the eastern side of the City of Perth (population >1 million) and was seen and heard by many eye- witnesses over its 150-kilometre land-flight trajectory. Observers reported that the "object" emitted a loud, roaring, pulsed noise— similar to a diesel freight train—before it arrived, and that it flew at a steady velocity similar to a high-speed jet aircraft. There was no report of a sonic boom. Whilst moving over the eastern part of Perth, near Midland, the fireball reportedly stopped dead in the sky and the tail inverted through the fireball to point towards the previous direction of trav- el! Then there was an enormous burst of blue-white arcing light- energy that briefly lit up the city and its suburbs as clear as daylight for many kilometres. In many ways the event was similar in force level to a nuclear blast. A loud, vibrating, massive explosion-cum- seismic wave reverberated around Perth, causing the city buildings to shake and books and objects to fall off shelves. Several observers reported that, at the instant of the explosion, 56 - NEXUS APRIL - MAY 1997 for a meteor-type event.