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This article was published in the daily newspaper Northern Territory News, Australia, on February 15, 2004.
The story was also told by ABC on http://www.abc.net.au/darwin/stories/s1041972.htm with text and audio.
By PAUL JACKSON
February 15, 2004
A FORMER Territorian is trying to track down three people to help him solve a 32-year-old UFO mystery.
Rodney Jarvis, 55, claims a huge UFO hovered above him for a number of minutes at Darwin Airport in 1972.
Mr Jarvis, a Melbourne company credit manager, is writing a book on his life and wants to devote a chapter on the NT incident. The former oil rig worker said he was at the airport waiting to catch a 6am flight to the Timor Sea when he was confronted by a large bright round object.
"I had been asleep in a car that a chap had driven me to the airport in when I woke about 5am," Mr Jarvis said. "I got out to stretch and saw this bright orange light moving just above houses about 1km west of the airport.
"It was doing 20km/h and I thought it was a helicopter as it was going so slow. But then it started zig-zagging towards me and suddenly it was about 150m above me. It just stopped dead in its tracks.
"It was about half the size of a house, bright orange on the bottom and dark grey to black on the top. I woke up Fred, the chap whose car it was.
"Then I started turning the car lights on and off trying to communicate with whatever it was.
"Fred was yelling out I was mad.
"He became panic stricken and took off and hid behind a building.
"I kept flashing the lights and did some signals with them in morse code.
"After a few seconds a blue light, like a laser beam came from the centre of the object repeating some of the morse code I had sent.
"I was spellbound.
"Fred was still yelling at me from behind the building. Then a car came racing towards us. It was two airport security guys.
"They got out and stood next to me and said: 'What the hell's that?' They couldn't believe it.
"Then it started moving up slowly and in a split second it took off in an arc that would have been about 30km and it was gone over the horizon. The two security guys ran to their car and sped away. They didn't say another word.
"I rang the local Darwin radio station and they told me they had received many calls from people living in the area claiming to have seen an unusual orange light hovering about the suburbs."
Mr Jarvis said he didn't know Fred's last name because he had only met him the night before at a city hostel. He said Fred, who he thought was 20, had told him his father was the caretaker at the Darwin German Club.
"One of the security guards would have been in his 30s and the other in his 40s. I'd really like to track them down to help me include a chapter in the book on the incredible experience we all witnessed," Mr Jarvis said.
Mr Jarvis can be contacted on email:rjarvis@albright.com.au.
