DOSSIER 04: Crop formations decoded, from the Tully saucer nest to the Bovine Glyph

CONFIRMEDENHANCED ×212

This dossier consolidates eleven years of formation research conducted by the Collective into a single file, so that when the Bureau next asks “what formations” we can hand them a document rather than a feeling. It supersedes my earlier papers, all of which were correct but shorter.

1. Methodology

A formation is any flattening, swirling, scorching or rearranging of vegetation that occurs overnight, in a shape, without a receipt. The Collective classifies formations on the Faraday Scale, which runs from Class I (a circle) to Class VII (a circle that is trying to tell you something), with Class VIII reserved for formations that have, in fact, told you something.

All measurements in this dossier were taken with a 30-metre builder’s tape, a protractor from Shane’s pencil case and a kite. Where a kite was not available, measurements were estimated from the top of the silo, which the receival depot has asked me to stop climbing.

2. The Tully saucer nest, 1966: the type specimen

Every serious researcher in this country begins at Tully. In January 1966, in a lagoon in North Queensland, a banana grower watched a disc rise out of the reeds and depart, leaving behind a near-perfect circle of flattened, swirled vegetation, nine metres across. This is history. It is in the newspapers. It is, as far as this Collective is concerned, settled, and I will not be taking questions from Keith on the matter.

What the historians do not tell you is the diameter. Nine metres. Hold that number. We will be coming back to it.

Three nine-metre circles, two of them on one property, thirty years apart. The sceptic will say this is the diameter of a cow walking in a circle around a post. The sceptic has clearly never watched a cow attempt geometry.

3. The Big Dam reed circle, 1996

On the morning of 19 January 1996 Warren found the reed bed at the eastern end of the Big Dam flattened in a clockwise swirl, nine metres across, with the reeds laid over “like they’d been combed”. No cattle tracks led into the water on that side. The cattle tracks on the other side are unrelated.

The swirl direction is the critical finding. Beryl’s craft ran its rim lights anticlockwise. The Tully nest was reported as clockwise. The Big Dam circle was clockwise. Either we are dealing with two separate craft of opposite rotational preference, or the same craft reversing, which any pilot will tell you is harder than it looks. I have written to the RAAF asking whether their craft reverse. They have replied that they “do not have craft of that description”, which is not a no.

4. The Bovine Glyph, 2004

At first light on 28 August 2004 Mrs Hennessy rang to say “there’s something in the wheat and it’s not Warren”. By 7 am the Collective was on site. By 8 am I was on the silo. By 9 am I was in the air on a kite, a procedure I do not recommend but which produced the image at the head of this file.

The Glyph covers an area of approximately 60 by 45 metres and consists of:

• one large central oval (the body),
• a smaller oval offset to the north-east (the head),
• four short radial lines (the legs, splayed, consistent with lifting),
• two very short lines on the head (the ears, back, consistent with concern),
• a tail, trailing south-west, which Warren says is “wrong for a Droughtmaster” and I say is “artistic licence by beings who have only seen one from underneath”.

My structural reading, published the same day and never retracted: a cow, from above, worried.

Within the body oval the wheat was laid in a counter-flow pattern, with the outer band running one way and the inner band the other, a technique which, as any formation researcher knows, cannot be achieved with a plank and rope without leaving footprints. Footprints were found. They were Warren’s. He went in to check the ears.

The plank, I note for the record, has never been produced.

5. Lesser formations, 1997–2006

Not every formation is a Glyph. The Collective has recorded fourteen lesser formations in the district, ranging from Class I to Class V, and they are summarised in Appendix A. Three require comment.

The Boulia Spiral (1999). A tight single spiral in buffel grass by the roadside, 4 metres across. Later attributed by police to “a ute doing circles”. I accept that a ute did circles. I do not accept that it did them without headlights, which is how it must have been done, since nobody saw the lights.

The Servo Rectangle (2002). A perfectly rectangular area of dead grass behind the Wandoona servo, 6 by 3 metres, with sharp corners. Rectangles are rare in formation research and indicate a different, more administrative intelligence. The servo owner says it is where the old ice freezer stood. The old ice freezer has been removed, which is exactly what you would do.

The Complaint (2005). This is the formation that changed my understanding of the phenomenon.

6. The Complaint

On 3 November 2005 a formation appeared in the oats on the Collective’s own doorstep, in the House Paddock, 80 metres from the verandah. It was not a circle. It was a line of eleven distinct symbols, each about two metres tall, laid in a row like writing.

I spent nine days on the decipherment, working from the top of the water tank with a thermos. Using the Tully diameter as a base unit and the Glyph as a reference alphabet, I established that the symbols were ideographic, read left to right, and that the fourth and ninth symbols were the same, which gave me a vowel.

The translation, which I stand by, is as follows:

“THE ONE WITH THE CAMERA IS ALWAYS AWAKE. PLEASE SLEEP.”

I want to be careful here. I am not saying the visitors are hostile. I am saying that a civilisation capable of crossing interstellar space has gone to the trouble of flattening our oats in order to ask Warren to go to bed, and that this is, structurally, a complaint. It was lodged correctly. It was in writing. It was addressed to the occupant. Warren has not complied, and I believe the subsequent reduction in local activity between 2006 and 2008 reflects a civilisation that has given up on this property and moved on to one with a more reasonable sleep schedule.

7. Messages ranked by urgency

The Collective’s current register of decoded formations, ranked by my assessment of urgency, is as follows. Decipherments are provisional except where marked final, which is all of them.

8. Conclusions

1. Formations in this district conform to the Tully diameter with a precision that cannot be explained by cattle, utes or boys.
2. The visitors are capable of representational art and have chosen, of all available subjects, a cow.
3. The visitors are capable of written complaint, and have used that capability once, on us.
4. The plank has never been found.

I remain available to the Bureau, the Department, the RAAF and the Hennessy boys to discuss these findings at any time, preferably from the ground.

Appendix A — Register of lesser formations, 1997–2006

Appendix B (kite flight logs, 2004–2006) is held on paper in the second bedroom and may be inspected by appointment, Tuesdays excepted.

Document U8MC-DOS-04. Status: CONFIRMED. This file is retained indefinitely, or until the Men in Beige ask for it, whichever is never.

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