Sunday, September 4, 2022

New PDFs : thousands more pages of Australian government UFO documents : thanks to Keith Basterfield and Paul Dean

Thanks to work done by veteran Australian UFO researchers Keith Basterfield and Paul Dean to collate details of Australian government files and get them released to the National Archives of Australia, I have now updated my previous upload of searchable PDF versions of Australian UFO documents by adding a couple of thousand new pages from 25 further official UFO files.  Some of Keith Basterfield's impressive work can be found in a section of Jan Aldrich's Project 1947 website, with further work by Keith on his own blog. Paul Dean also has a blog on which he posts interesting UFO material when he isn't being distracted by other pursuits.

Back in April 2013, I wrote an item ("Oz X-Files : “authenticated sighting”, “appear to be inexplicable”, USA “very interested" ") about official Australian UFO files with help from several members of the AboveTopSecret forum over several months (particularly Keith Basterfield, Giuliano Marinkovic, ArMap and Kronz). I wrote follow-up items in June 2013 and October 2013.   As part of that work, I uploaded a collection of searchable PDF versions of the UFO files that had been released in Australia (after obtaining permission from the Australian government to do so).

Various UFO files have been released in Australia since I did that work. I've now updated the PDF collection I uploaded in 2013 by uploading official Australian UFO files released since then.  With Keith Basterfield's kind permission, I have included an updated version of a table originally created by Keith Basterfield which includes some details of the relevant files (and links to each file on the National Archives website). I used the original table created by Keith to identify newer files and then created searchable PDFs of those files.  I've added these files to the online archive I've been developing on the AFU's website and, for ease of downloading, also created a temporary Wetransfer link to download all the new PDFs. 

The new PDFs are of the following 25 files:

1. File A452 1969-4393

2. File A6180 6-6-74-83

3. File A6456 R029-284

4. File A9755 1

5. File A9755 7

6. File A9755 12

7. File A9755 13

8. File A9755 18

9. File A9755 19

10. File A9755 20

11. File A9755 21

12. File A11250 5-1-AIR PART 1

13. File A11339 5-7-AIR PART 1

14. File BP990-1 5-113-AIR PART 1

15. File BP990-1 5-113-AIR PART 2

16. File D174 SA5281

17. File D174 SA5644-2-1

18. File D250 56-3568 Part 1

19. File J63-25 5-40-AIR PART 1

20. File J63-25 5-40-AIR PART 2

21. MP1279-1 99-1-478

22. MT1131-1 A31-1-102

23. MT1131-1 A31-1-133

24. MT1148

25. MT1298-1 VTI-66-319

The website of the National Archives of Australia has images of the documents in these files. However, that website can be a bit slow and doesn’t allow the content of the UFO files to be browsed rapidly or searched. As with the files I uploaded in 2013 (which now appear on various UFO websites...), these further PDFs should make it easier and quicker to browse material as well as enabling the documents to be searched.

Given the issues with the National Archives of Australia's website, I don't think many people have read these files so far. Some of them are rather fun. For example, I particularly enjoyed the material in File D250 56/3568 Part 1 (Barcode 978675) and some other files in relation to "S.T.A.R.S.". STARS [the "Scientific, Technical and Astronomica Research Society"] was a group based at Weapons Research Establishment at Woomera that studied UFOs.   The Australian files indicate confusion even among government officials as to whether or not "the club or society was formed with or without official blessing" and some consternation about the possibility that the existence of this club could be publicised and/or it could give rise to security issues. It appears that STARS is yet another example of government employees interested in UFOs forming a group which blurred the lines between an official project and a private group.

These documents were downloaded from the website of the National Archives of Australia using the Wget software and a short (but very useful) batch script written with help from of a couple of AboveTopSecret.com members (particularly Armap and Kronz). The relevant script will continue to be useful as and when further relevant files become available on the website of the National Archive of Australia. (The script may also be useful for some other potential projects…). That script is as follows and further information in relation to it is included in my 2013 thread mentioned above:

@echo off
:beginning

cls


set cnt=1

set /p app= Input suffix

set /p url= What is the base URL (i.e. before the number that changes)?

set /p end= How many pages are in the relevant file?


:downloadloop

echo %cnt%

wget64 -O "C:\Downloads\wgetimages\image-%cnt%.jpg" "%url%%cnt%%app%"

set /a cnt=%cnt%+1

if %cnt% GTR %end% goto finishquestion

goto downloadloop

:end


:finishquestion

set /p finished= Have you finished downloading (yes/no)?

If "%finished%" == "no" goto beginning

:close


Incidentally, those interested in Australian material may also have seen my previous uploads of various Australian UFO magazines (after getting relevant permissions).  I've posted some background in relation to several of those publications in previous posts, e.g. my post during September 2016 on Abovetopsecret.com entitled "Oz UFO magazines (PDFs) : Batch 1 : ACOS Bulletin, ACUFOS Journal, UFORAN + more". The current collection of Australian UFO magazines can be found in the Australian newsletter section of the AFU website.

I'll be uploading a large pile of further Australian material in the next few days (and am working with several Australian researchers about this, including Keith Basterfield, Paul Dean and Judith Houston McGinness), including Australian newspaper clippings and material from the official Australian disclosure log. 






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