Two pilots returning from Adelaide to Perth reported an unusual aerial formation near Zanthus, east of Kalgoorlie, on 22 August 1968. The case combines a written crew account, radio-report correspondence, early newspaper coverage and a witness interviewed decades afterwards. Those layers are related, but they are not interchangeable evidence.
The crew report in the released file
The public transcription of RAAF file A703, 580/1/1 part 10, pages 221–223 preserves a report by Gordon Smith. Walter Gardin was flying Piper Navajo VH-RTO when he called Smith forward from the cabin. At about 0940 GMT, Smith described a larger dark form and several smaller shapes appearing to keep station with the aircraft. The large form seemed to divide and rejoin; smaller cigar-like forms moved out and returned.
The report describes loss of voice communication with Kalgoorlie, despite carrier and static, followed by recovery after the formation disappeared. Smith explicitly said the unknown objects’ distance could not be established because their size was unknown. He also noted that neither pilot checked for compass or direction-finder deviations.
These qualifications are central. A comparison with a familiar aircraft is not a measured size, and an impression of rapid recession cannot provide a speed without range information. A radio interruption occurring during an observation is a correlation; the report alone cannot show what caused it.
An administrative check, rather than an identification
The same released-file transcription, pages 218–221, records the report reaching RAAF Pearce in November and subsequent requests to check whether Civil Aviation had received it. These papers establish that the allegation entered an official reporting process. They do not, by their presence in an Air Force file, certify the formation as an aircraft or an extraordinary object.
A record that pilots contacted an agency can support the fact that a report was made at the time. It does not independently reproduce the visual observation. The distinction between a reporting witness and a second witness to the phenomenon should be kept throughout this case.
What the early press accounts add
In a 2012 source note, Keith Basterfield transcribed a Daily News account dated 23 August 1968, found in an older UFO newsletter. It describes Smith being called to the cockpit at 5.40 pm, an initially white appearance, small cigar-shaped objects and a total episode of about twenty minutes. The intermediary newsletter matters: this is a researcher’s transcription of a reproduced newspaper item, not a newly examined original photograph or flight recording.
Basterfield also located The West Australian’s 24 August 1968 report. It described a white object and a roughly twenty-minute episode, with Smith expressing uncertainty about what it was. That shorter newspaper version differs in colour and duration from the darker, ten-minute sequence in the formal statement. The differences should be displayed rather than combined into a falsely precise account.
The 2011 interview and the mirage question
Basterfield’s original re-examination includes his 15 September 2011 telephone interview with Gardin. The pilot then described smaller objects ranging through about thirty degrees and a final departure upwards at approximately forty-five degrees. These details led Basterfield to reject a mirage proposal attributed to Martin Shough. His paper records both the proposal and his reasons for disagreement.
The interview took place forty-three years after the event. It adds information, but the delay must remain visible when its details are compared with the earlier statement. Recollection is not a contemporaneous instrument record, and the apparent precision of an angle given in conversation does not establish that it was measured in flight.
Gardin said the aircraft had no radar. Basterfield also checked historical radar coverage and concluded that the Kalgoorlie traffic information was based on reported traffic, rather than radar surveillance. Accordingly, an airport’s statement that no traffic was known is not treated here as a radar detection or a radar-confirmed absence of ordinary aircraft.
Outcome and reported features
UKPX classifies Zanthus as Disputed. The reviewed re-investigation preserves a natural-optics proposal and an explicit rejection based on later witness detail. Neither establishes the physical nature of what was seen. Missing range measurements, the limitations of the later interview and the absence of an independent radar record constrain any stronger conclusion.
The cigar and orb filters follow the crew’s explicit descriptions of smaller elongated forms and a larger form changing from spherical towards elongated. They describe reported appearances, not a verified vehicle design. No occupants, non-human contact, landing or radar tag is assigned. A pilot’s later belief about inhabited planets is an interpretation, not contact evidence.
A route-area reference
The map is an approximate Zanthus locality reference at 31.03° S, 123.57° E, rounded from atlas coordinates cited in Basterfield’s re-examination. The aircraft was moving, and the objects’ distance was unknown. The pin therefore marks the named route area, not an exact encounter point. The photograph shows a former Zanthus railway cabin after relocation to the Bassendean rail museum, providing railway-history context rather than a view of the flight path.