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*‘ IvOok h lint I MIH wir!■ There aren't any Flying San ears—or are Uierer Sydney salesgirl Harhara Chaffey, n hose jnn it in to tinfHick sauccm. dust saucers and sell saucers isn't quite nitre. Thin ueek mlk tl Flying Saucers gate uing* to her imagination. '7/ if «i*rlt; on much longer,“ she said '77/ begin lo *e them no self nnnrers uith uinglt; on. flying all around me, Junl like that.N. Jn.Y 1.1. 1947Stories (like the saucers) goround and roundBL U E Y, the ubiquitous joey/7 had these things in common with t h e Flying Saucer—he hopped about a bit, covered a lot of ground, had a lot of people guessing.He hopped from a train In Canada In 1942. and. in ao doing, hopped—with a good deal of agility — Into the live* and Imagination of well-meaning folk, too numerous to mention.During a brief, yet exciting existence, he trailed printers' Ink across the front pages of newspapers from Vancouver to Nova ScotiaThe curious port about Bluey was that he didn't exist Bui Tor nil that, hi' came and saw ana conquered — a lung - limbed Aussie, with a sense oi huinor, who put max.-hysteria to a test long oe-fdre the Flying Saucer wn; ever invented Warrant Officer J M.Stiachan, of the RAAF, told the story Ui the RAAF wart ime m a g a 11 n e.' Wings.’* In view of things that happened Lhis week, it's worth retelling The first mention of the kangaroo, he says, was made on a troop-train somewhere between the port of debarkation and Montreal.Bored by hours of inactivity, two Australian uirmen. It seemed, told an escorting sergeant that they had— allegedly—smuggled a kangaroo into the country from Australia.Upon hearing thetr weird and exciting tale, the sergeant carried it on tu his commanding officer.The kangaroo—he was only a joey —had lumped off the train, conveniently enough, by the lixnc official inquiries stalled.At Lachme, the commanding officer granted leave to the two kangaroo smugglers to search lor their pet.B_JY this time, the news had penetrated to the Montreal newspapers. and ’h Imaginative airmen were too deeply Involved to draw back Says Sirachan:•Unable to find the kangaroo In any of Montreal's night-clubs or hotels, the pair returned to camp worn out next morning, hoping that all would be forgottenThe morning papers, however, brought forth n two-column n*count of ihe Australian contingents loss and ihe search wus on Radio announcers gave lengthy descriptions as to the feeding habits, nppenrance and details of kangaroos, and newspaper accounts next day re-ported that the kangaroo had been sighted by fl farmer's boy near a herd of cows. 400 miles away across the St Lawrence River A woman stated that she had seen it eating her garden vegetables, and newspaper men udvnnced the theory that It must have Jumped a freight train.This was countered by some Australians. who explained in an evening newspaper that the 'Joey' was 'hopping mad', xnd in this condition could have travelled from 60 to 100 miles an hour Anyway. Bluey. to cut a long story short, cropped up like the elusive Pimpernel, here, there and everywhere.He hopped overnight from Alberta to Saskatchewan: was glimpsed afar off on farms and ranches; made one brlrf appearance in n suburban bnck-street.Then, after awhile, he didn’t make the headlines any more Bluey's few brief hours of glory had come to an end.This week, over in the States, you weren't fashionable unless you had seen a Flying Saucer Bluey, In fact, was only small-time stuff to the epidemic of tumbling whirligigs that patterned both the American sky Hnd the American imagination.They were seen In Sydney They were;• About a foot across.• Larger than a plane.• Resembled five-roomed houses shaped like wash-tubs.• Illuminated dLscs.• They skimmed across the sky like low-hnnging clouds before u hurricane.Whether saucers really began ‘iking wings overnight Is stiU problematical, but, one thing la certain, a curious col-lectlve Illusion was making quite a lot Of people we things' —much the same way that a non-existent Bluey hud made well-meaning Canadians see things five years ago.Professor F. S. Cotton, Professor of Physiology at the Sydney University, explained the saucers away as the effect of red corpuscles of the blood passing in front of the retina of me eye/'That may be true of the Flying Saucer. But what about the savage lion that allegedly wandered up end clown the South Coast some years ago?I HIS non. like Bluey. was seen everywhereReports. In fact, took on such a persistent note that some city newspaper* sent special representatives northward to Join In the search.Housewives shut and bolted their doors at night to keep the monster out.One particular farmer was made of sterner stuff.Hearing the creature prowling around his farm-house in the small hours, he took down his .shotgun, opened the front-door, peeped out. and sure enough, spotted it—a fearsome creature —less than a hundred yards away.He took a pot shot, closed the door again hurriedly, and waited until morning. Then, with the dawn, heventured out again and found It—aa dead as the proverbial door-knob.It was his prise Tam-worth boar.Thoae are some of the humorous sidelights on an intriguing psychological problem — the effect of auto-suggestion on the mass mind.People the world over have Fallen victims to this curious complaint.Suggest something to them, set their thought6 recesses working on clear-•-deftned lines. alarm them just a little. Intrigue them somewhat, and anything may happen.Probaoly U»e moat outstanding example of this occurred in October. 1938. when American playwright and actor Orson Weller presented a radio version Of the H. O. Wells Imaginative story. The War of the Wor lets.Listening with half-an-ear to tneir radio sets, residents of New Jersey hearu tu their amazement, ihui Martians had landed on American soil in curious-shaped cylinders.Wiiai wua mure to the point, they hau landed m «ew Jel gey, light on the Hui.t-dooistep, fear, auaurd no doubt, buL very real. Jumped out of the night.It was not confined to New Jersey. All over northern UoA Hit* hysteria spread. Men and women. In crowded city street*, sought safety In numbers from the Martian invader Women collapsed. Telephones ran hot. Radios and newspapers hurried out with reassuring messages.Said Orson Welles ui CaluorniH this week: 1 [cel like a piker after hearing teporis of flying discs. Nearer home was the lesson of the Souilu in Cloud.This lil-uied air-llner, carrying six passengers and a crew of two, dis-uppeaicd mysteriously on March 21, 1931.faouih-oound from Sydney, it failed to reach the airport at Melbourne, its final resting-piace being either the DOvtom oi me sea or some obscure valley in the neavily-wooded southernAIDS.reople who hnd seen or heard it were invited to gel in touch with those in authority.lHE SouthfTen Cloud, according to n ports, must have been in different places, a hundred miles apart, at times when it couldn't possibly nave been in the air• The mysterious Loch Ness monster. a few years before the war. revealed itself lo observers in a number A forms.More than 100 people saw It— but none was able to produce u scale, a hair or a tooth to substantiate thestory• In a somewhat different category is the famous story of The AnRels of Mons. It originated in the London “Evening News of September 29. 1914-when an English novelist. Arthur Machen. described how. in the disastrous retreat from Mons. angel bowmen. led by St. George himself, had come to the aid of the British troop*The story sprpad and soon officers nnd men. returning from the front, said that thev hnd actually seen the angels. Machen. however, claimed that It was a complete concoction, and In 1915 published a pamphlet The Bowmen to apologise for Hie hoax nnd disavow Its truth.To this day. however, there are people who si 111 believe It.Bluey the gallivanting Joey. and the Flying Saucer mav not have much In common, but they both add up to n pretty Intriguing problem.If they do nothing else, they prove one thing—you can't always believe the man or the woman who saw itaT*n when they saw It—with their own two eyes. . .—0. Beeby
Newspaper Details
Sydney Sun
Sydney, New South Wales, AU
Sun, Jul 13, 1947
Page 34
Full Page
Clipped by
Kevin S.
CA 15 Dec 2021
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