Inside The Nest's With Shane Pennisi

The morning of January 19th, 1966, began like any other for George Pedley, a 28-year-old banana farmer living just outside the small tropical town of Tully, in north Queensland, Australia. The summer sun was already warm, and a light mist hovered above the cane fields as he drove his tractor along a dirt track toward a place called Horseshoe Lagoon, a quiet, reed-filled swamp on his friend Albert Pennisi’s property. George was on his way to check an irrigation pump. The air was still, the sound of insects constant. Nothing unusual — until, suddenly, a strange hissing noise pierced through the steady hum of the tractor engine. He slowed. The sound was sharp, like air escaping under pressure from a possible tyre puncture, but yet it seemed to come from above and to his right. Looking up, George’s eyes caught a flash of movement — and then he saw it. Just twenty or thirty feet ahead of him, a large disc-shaped object was rising out of the lagoon. It was roughly 25 feet across, about 9 feet high at its centre, and had a smooth, metallic-grey surface that caught the morning sunlight. The object spun slowly as it lifted straight up, water and reeds falling away from its sides. “It was like a flying saucer,” he later told police. “Only silent — except for that hissing sound.” The object rose to about 20 feet above the lagoon, hovered for a few seconds, tilted slightly, then suddenly accelerated upward. It disappeared into the blue sky in seconds, leaving behind only the smell of wet vegetation and a shocked farmer staring after it. Curious and a little shaken, George walked over to where the object had been. When he reached the edge of the lagoon, he saw something that made his heart pound all over again. There, he could see only water, a perfectly circular patch in the thick reeds — a 30-foot-wide disc where vegetation should have been but now, a swirling pattern of water. George returned the next morning with good friend Albert Pennisi and his younger sons, only to find the reeds returned on the surface. But the reeds maintained the circular impression. Bent over neatly, pressed flat in a clockwise spiral, as if something heavy had descended on them and spun. The water underneath the mat of reeds was clear, unlike the muddy water everywhere else in the lagoon. The strange mark looked almost woven, as though the plants had been plaited together by invisible hands. It floated gently, rising and falling on the water. To George, it was exactly where the object had come from — its “nest.” Over the months that followed, other “nests” appeared in the same lagoon — smaller circles of flattened reeds, sometimes after reports of strange lights in the sky. The story spread beyond Australia, reaching newspapers in Britain and the United States. Some UFO researchers declared it proof of a landing trace — physical evidence that something unknown had touched the Earth. Skeptics stuck with the whirlwind theory, or suggested a hoax, though no one ever found signs of trickery. George Pedley himself never tried to profit from the event and never changed his story. He maintained until his death that he had seen a real, solid object — not wind, not light, not imagination. This Video is recorded by and for the Encounters Down Under Podcast/Channel and is not to be redistributed without permission by Anthony Goodall - Encounters Down Under Watch the Youtube interview in the link below Contact can be made via email at australianufosightings@outlook.com.au Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Inside The Nest's With Shane Pennisi is an episode from Encounters Down Under by Anthony Goodall.

This episode is 1:21:40 long.

This episode was published on Nov 2, 2025.

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