My first UFO sighting from memory was in the Spring of 1978. I was hitch hiking with a girlfriend from Nimbin to Sydney, a journey that took about 8 hours by road. It was a clear, crisp evening and we had definitely been drinking champagne so at first I thought we were seeing things and it was all a bit of a joke.

My friend Poppy had been reading a book by Wilhelm Reich and suggested an energy experiment. We were sitting in the back of an old utility truck and watching the stars, feeling slightly inebriated and happy. We were in our late teens and on an adventure together.

She showed me how to make an energy ball using both my cupped hands and rotating them a few inches away from each other in opposite directions, imagining a ball. I was surprised to feel a ball in my hands and asked her what it was. She said it was what Reich called "orgonic energy" and that if we threw it at the sky and asked for a UFO to catch it and make contact with us that one might answer our request.

I thought this sounded like a great idea so I made my energy ball really big and in my best telepathic voice sent a request that any nearby UFO reveal itself and come and hang out with us. We talked and laughed and watched the skies as the ute bumped along the old highway and scoured the skies for our UFO friends. After about 10 minutes Poppy shouted "Look ! There it is ! Just down on the left from the Southern Cross !"

I looked up to where she was pointing and sure enough, there was a plane up among the stars. I laughed and told her planes didn't count. "It's not a plane, it is red !" She said. "Planes are red from some angles." I said. She kept insisting that this was NOT a plane. I was getting tired of the joke ; the champagne was wearing off and my backside was getting sore from bumping around in the tray of the ute.

I made one last effort to glance up at the plane and to my astonishment it did a rapid zigzag movement across the sky then dove down to the horizon line, all in seconds flat.

"Did you see that!" I asked Poppy. " You  betcha ! I told you that was not a plane ! We should try asking it telepathically to change colour, then we will know that they are doing the fancy flying for us, as a way to communicate with us."

"Even if it is a UFO, we don't know that it's not secret air force stuff, you know..." We had both read "Cosmic Conspiracy" by Stan Deyo and although I was open to meeting a real ET if the chance arose, I was sure there were other explanations to be considered before jumping to conclusions, but seeing I didn't have any better ideas, I again made an effort to telepathically communicate, just to eliminate the remote possibility that anyone was listening up there.

Poppy suggested that we ask ET (actually, this was well before the term "ET" was coined as the movie of that name was on a future timeline at this point in earth history but....) that we ask ET to change the ship to a bright purple colour. I thought this was pretty silly as even if the aliens could hear our thoughts, they may not have the ability to change the lights on the vehicle at such short notice. The champagne had really worn off now and I was cold and wanted the driver to stop so we could eat and pee.

I thought of the colour purple (this movie was not born yet either) as hard as I could on an empty stomach and kept my eye on the now very zigzaggy craft. It immediately went a bright purple colour and I KNEW I was seeing things. Poppy was almost jumping out of her skin.

She knocked wildly on the cab of the ute and the driver yelled out that he would stop for petrol in a few minutes at a truck-stop. "No, there's a real UFO ! "  Poppy yelled through the wind, but the driver didn't seem to hear her.

I needed to clarify that this was or was not happening so I thought another colour at the thing in the sky and it went green, red then bright iridescent blue and purple again, zipped here and there like a fire fly, then dove down to the tree-line and out of sight. 

"Oh my god, it just went green, red, blue and purple. Did you see that ?" She gasped. I was OK with seeing things, but I was totally spooked now because it appeared that we were both having the same hallucination in technicolour. I was secretly relieved as the driver pulled off the road and into the truck stop.

In the restroom I washed my face and took a deep breath. " I am never drinking champagne again !" I lied to myself.

Inside the trucker's diner, Poppy was busy trying to recruit interested parties, but as we were obviously hippies and very young, all she got was a few "Done worry 'bout it luv "'s and a smirk or two. Not one person would come outside and make a darn fool of themselves by looking up at the sky for flying saucers or little green men. I was mildly embarrassed but quite amazed that everyone was so uninterested and so self-conscious. I got the feeling that everyone except us was in slow motion, like they were awake and asleep at the same time...

that was not the last time I was to have that feeling in my life.....

We went outside with our toasted sandwiches and coffee and gazed longingly up. The thing had nose dived before we stopped so we were not sure where it was now, but right on cue, as if it truly COULD hear our thoughts, the whatever-it-was flew up from the tree-line where it had been hiding and flashed a few colours for us then did a little zigzag at incredible speed and just hovered there, taunting us to make the next move.

The driver came out and motioned us to go, so we climbed back into the rear of the ute and were on the road again, heads firmly tilted to the sky. Luckily it was a warm spring night and the sky was clear as a baby's eyes and just as bright.

We followed that thing, or should I say it followed us...? ...for about 250 kilometres that night, all the way to Grafton. We only lost sight of it because we got a lift in a closed car and got sick of craning our necks out of the window.

We did the colour game over and over. It was too erratic, going up and down and all over the place, to be a plane of any kind we had heard about. If it WAS some kind of secret earth technology it was pretty impressive, especially the way it read our minds and changed colour on our whim....

"Red ! Now blue ! Go green, purple, yellow then white really fast....."

I have a few more ET tales to tell. Check back soon. I will get to the angels and ghosts as well, just give me time, elusive time ! Stay tuned to the skies....