Frederick Birmingham UFO Encounter Parramatta 1868

[Bob Bain]

From the Sydney Morning Herald By Erik Jensen
11 December 2007 — 9:20pm

(Blobb will join the walk tomorrow to commemorate this event)


https://theozfiles.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-1868-ufo-vision-of-frederick.html

In 1868 a floating ark, filled with paper and piloted by a
neutral-coloured spirit, abducted surveyor Frederick Birmingham and
took him to the highest point of Parramatta Park, kindly returning him
to awake in his own home. Birmingham had another UFO sighting in 1873
and became so obsessed with the phenomenon he set down his experiences
in a book.

By 1950, Katoomba and the surrounding Blue Mountains had become a
hotbed of extraterrestrial sightings - a flap, to use the ufological
term. Fever was such that the happenings made the front page of the
Herald and the RAAF was put on standby with a warning not to provoke
the aliens. Since then, incidents have become frequent enough to
inspire a new exhibition at the Penrith Regional Gallery.

"My sons were out at a place they call the Ruined Castle at
Faulconbridge, a derelict house out in a paddock. They saw what they
described as a huge mothership going over," Vernon Treweeke, an artist
participating in the Penrith show, says of his experiences.

"It went over and it was silent, they didn't hear anything until it
had passed. It must have been very high in the atmosphere. Obviously,
it might have been in space. Hard to tell. They described it as having
some sort of symbol underneath it, a large sort of hieroglyph type of
thing. It had portholes as well."

The curtains on Treweeke's house, in bushland at Hazelbrook, are
drawn. The entire building is blacked-out and he answers the door with
a pair of 3D glasses in his hand. Downstairs, in a basement-studio, he
activates a series of ultraviolet lights. With the glasses and the
fluorescent paint on his canvases, parts of the work start to morph.
Blues sink into the background and oranges reach forward.

"Prismatic Fresnels," he says, referring to the beam-splitting lenses
he wears. Treweeke works with colour perspective and the effects of
fluorescence, painting the reaches of his imagination in a process he
likens to Einstein's theoretical physics. A product of the space race,
and of London psychedelia in the 1960s, he believes art can push
reality in directions science is unable to explore.

"It is a return to a visionary awareness. Artists used to be
visionaries, they used to paint angels and gods. They had this
visionary role and then they became just like cameras with paint," he
says.

"We've been through a cycle. The movies have been doing it and people
are ready for it in art. The artists as visionaries can actually
explore the future and sort of report on it before it happens."

Anne Loxley, co-curator of The Visitors, mounted the show when she
realised how many contemporary artists were working within the realms
of ufology and how prevalent sightings were on the outskirts of
Sydney. "I hadn't even seen the UFOs in Tim Johnson's paintings until
it was pointed out," she says of the discoveries.

The show is weighted towards believers, with only one sceptic among
the 15 artists, though that is not how Loxley planned it. "It's only
weighted towards art of quality. I was surprised by the believers. If
it was a show about believing, it would be put on by a UFO society."

Loxley is not a believer - "too emotionally and psychologically
fragile to let that be part of my life" - but describes herself as an
enthusiast. She is compelled by the repetition of accounts and what
she calls seductive and persuasive geological evidence in the Blue
Mountains.

The show itself, however, was curated with scholarly responsibility.
Prominent ufologist Bill Chalker was commissioned for a catalogue
essay and the exhibition furnished with an evidence room of accounts,
photographs and DNA testimony.

Chalker prides himself on forensics - he is a chemist by training -
and dismisses the majority of sightings as mis-identifications. But
for all the false alarms and questionable witnesses, he has proof
enough to believe. "Historically, from the 1950s to now, there have
been thousands of sightings [in the Blue Mountains]," he says. "In
terms of unexplained sightings, there has been less than 100 but even
that is a compelling number."

Chalker, who has been working in the field for 40 years, looks first
at the planets to explain most sightings - dismissing those things
that are probably Jupiter or a comet. But if an event is unexplainable
- better still, part of a pattern or leaving behind evidence - Chalker
will consider it positively.

He is fastidious to the extent that certain accounts in the
exhibition catalogue were footnoted with his disapproval, though the
Blue Mountains have his certification as a hot spot. Chalker says
ufology is marginalised by a lack of funding and the fact many
practitioners approach it from an armchair vantage. There is too much
data for most to wade through and doing so is no way to advance a
scientific career.

"Eyewitness testimony often puts people away in jail," Chalker says,
"but when it comes to UFO sightings that same testimony is deemed
uncountable."

This is where art emerges, taking the reins at the point science must
leave them. "The other side of it is that the solutions to these sort
of sets of problems are always artistic," David Haines, who is
participating in the exhibition with partner Joyce Hinterding, says.
"At the end of the day, we're very happy for art to also fabricate and
construct the world as much as receive factual inputs. For us, we're
also melding this material into fictional constructions."

Haines and Hinterding head into the night to record sounds the human
ear cannot. "It's a sort of folk science," Haines says of the antennas
and makeshift oscillators.

The work does not interpret the data, meshing the sound with video
but leaving the audience to find what Hinterding calls coherences.
After living in the Mountains for four years, both artists agree the
prevalence of sightings has something to do with the region's
association with counter-culture. Treweeke, on the other hand,
believes the watching is related to elevation and clear skies - a
point Loxley echoes, if not out of politeness for the people involved.

For Chalker, who has spent so long fighting for legitimacy, the
question is too hard to answer: there is a hot spot but to explain it
would be to solve half the problems with which his science grapples.
However, he does not view the interpretations of artists as
undermining his science - people think popular culture inspires
sightings but it is the other way around.

That much is true for Haines, whose interest is piqued by other
people's accounts and an open mind.

"It's the desire also, I think, for extra-reality. It's very easy to
be dragged into the everyday. A lot of artists have spent a lot of
energy trying to elevate the everyday but I think that artists are
always seeking the extraordinary," he says. "I haven't spoken to
anyone who has directly seen it but I've spoken to a lot of people
who've looked for it and even that's interesting. It's an act of
desire as much as anything, it's wanting to see it."

Blobb
Werrington

------------------>

[Bob Bain]

On Sat, 28 Jul 2018 17:05:50 +1000, I <++@tpg.com.au> wrote:

>
> From the Sydney Morning Herald By Erik Jensen
>11 December 2007 — 9:20pm
>
> (Blobb will join the walk tomorrow to commemorate this event)

The walk went well.

BTW The Kiwis seem interested in this...


http://hauntedauckland.com/site/the-1868-ufo-vision-of-frederick-william-birmingham/

9/12/2013

Frederick William Birmingham story according to frederick Cox SMH Sat
23 Jan 1932 pg 7Did a UFO buzz New South Wales, Australia, in 1868?
was a local surveyor invited to board this incredible flying machine
by its strange pilot, Or was it a dream?

Here is the 2002 recreation of the 1868 “UFO vision” of Frederick
William Birmingham in Parramatta which was part of 2 an internet TV
programme, the UFO Show on Banana TV

For background:

http://theozfiles.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/did-frederick-william-birmingham-build.html

http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/229/australias_1868_ufo_buzz.html

Author: Mark Wallbank

Paranormal Investigator and Founder of Haunted Auckland. I have been
a mad researcher of everything Paranormal, Extraterrestrial and
Crypto-zoological, since early childhood. When not creating electronic
music, watching Horror movies and documentaries, archiving and
documenting NZ’s diverse and eclectic music history, I have spent
countless hours investigating and furthering my research out in the
field, either as part of a group or solo, since the early 80's. I’ve
spent much time in opportunistic investigations whilst travelling
around New Zealand and Internationally.


http://www.unitybooksonline.co.nz/nz-non-fiction/general-nz-non-fiction/haunted-nz-road-trip

Unity Wellington Stock : 3
ISBN: 9781869664640
Title: Haunted NZ Road Trip
Author: WALLBANK MARK

In the search for 'ghost on the road', Mark Wallbank goes roadtrippin
the paranormal in New Zealand.He travels the country gaining rare
access to some of our allegedly most haunted historic locations.
Modern science has not determined the actual existence of ghosts. Any
investigation of the paranormal requires an open mind, and is based on
practical research. Mark Wallbank heads a team of researchers who us
an electro-magnetic field meter as well as audio and video
recorders,cameras, thermometers and the like to measure motion and
atmospheric data.

Mark sets out to document wandering highway spectres and ghostly
hitch-hikers, old buildings of mystery and fear.After reading this
collection of stories, urban legends,personal anecdotes and true life
ghost experiences, you'll be sure to sleep with the light on for many
nights to come.

Mark Wallbank is the founder of New Zealand based paranormal research
and investigation team, Haunted Auckland and has been fascinated in
all aspects of the paranormal spectrum his entire life. Since the
early 80s Mark has been an experimental electronic musician, ran a
music and events label and retail outlet, published two indie music
magazines, has been a research consultant, worked in the Print
industry, photographer, social networker, a collector of creepy
things, public speaker and has written articles and reviews for
numerous print and online magazines. His tireless research has led him
all over New Zealand as well as exploration and investigation
internationally.

Format: Paperback
Price: $35.00

See also

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iDw8H_-O38

Hard To Find Bookshop, Onehunga
152 views

Haunted Auckland
Published on 22 Apr 2016

Blobb
Werrington

-------------->