UFOs in the daily Press:

UFOs call town home

By IAN HABERFIELD

THE tiny town of Beveridge, north of Melbourne, is fast earning a reputation as Australia's UFO hot spot.

Since Whittlesea Council released a photograph purportedly showing a UFO, other locals have come forward claiming to have seen flying objects.

Kilmore resident Peter Christie said he was taking his daughter, Elise, to a friend's house about 10pm on Saturday, January 10, when he noticed something flying in the west.

"I saw this round thing in the sky with lights coming out of it," she said. "It was sort of moving. It wasn't going very fast or anything.

"It had big, round lights coming out of it, it was too wide to be a plane... and it was nothing like a helicopter."

She said there were several lights beaming outwards from the side of the object, parallel to the ground.

"We both said, 'no, that's definitely not a plane'," she said, adding that the object was in view for several minutes.

"We were going over a hill and there was one stage when we couldn't see anything. Then it appeared again. I wasn't scared. I was a bit shocked."

Mr Christie, who was driving, managed a few short glances at the object but agreed it was definitely not a plane.

"We didn't know what it was... and then we heard the news the other day," he said.

Elise said several people had greeted her comments about the sighting with scepticism. So she stopped talking of it until Whittlesea Council's photograph, with a disc-shaped object in the sky, was widely publicised late last month.

The release of Whittlesea Council's UFO photo sparked much interest and the council's website recorded more than 37,000 hits over three days.

Council traffic engineer Roland Rozario, who took the photo, was interviewed reporters from across the globe and websites reprinted his photograph.