People in strict black suits warned the children not to talk too much as the military and intelligence agencies flooded the area.
The event left the Australian suburb full of witnesses awaiting a response.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Westall event, but its participants are no closer to understanding what happened than on that fateful morning.
On April 6, 1966, at 11 a.m., a large number of Australians witnessed a UFO sighting.
Westall High and High School students and teachers, as well as other citizens, say they saw three unmarked flying objects noiselessly maneuvering across the sky.
The objects landed in a clearing adjacent to the school grounds and then quickly flew away, leaving behind large, well-defined circles of crumpled and discolored grass.
Within hours of the event, intelligence agencies, military and journalists flooded the area, trying to make sense of this mysterious meeting.
Several witnesses stated that severely dressed men in dark suits warned them not to talk about the incident.
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The warnings had no effect, and many witnesses shared their stories.
The Dandenong Journal came out reporting the incident on the front page and sequel to the following, and Nine News also reported on the evening edition.
However, later all the videos were deleted and disappeared from the archives.
Despite the news coverage and many possible explanations, the incident remains shrouded in mystery.
The first page of the Dandenong Journal covering the event
Eyewitness accounts
Researcher Shane Ryan has spent the last 10 years of his life investigating the incident and after speaking with over 100 direct witnesses, he believes something strange has happened.
“It was so unusual … It happened in broad daylight and so many people saw the landing and departure,” he says in an interview with news.com.au.
“The event was significant enough to generate a great response. Whatever it was, then the government agencies studied the landing site and took soil samples."
Ryan believes there has been a concerted effort to keep the incident secret.
“[The media] continue to face a wall of silence on the part of the authorities, so it ceases to be an event and becomes just a memory of the participants,” he says.
Joy Clarke was 12 and a half years old at the time, and she vividly remembers the events that happened that day.
“I was in the class when the students rushed inside and told us the news. We rushed down to the field and I saw three flying saucers that day,”she tells news.com.au.
“I personally believe they were not of this world. They were definitely from somewhere else, because I've never seen anything like it."
“The military arrived and the police were already here. We were told that we had imagined and there was nothing while people in black interrogated some other children."
Another local newspaper
Terri Peck was playing cricket on the school field when she saw the plate and decided to follow her to Grange Wildlife Sanctuary.
I was about six meters away from him. It was round, and larger than a car. I think I saw the lights under it,”she tells the Herald Sun newspaper.
“There were two girls in front of me. One was very frightened, and both were pale, downright white, like ghosts. They fainted. One was even taken to the hospital in an ambulance."
The 56-year-old woman recalls that they began to hide the event without wasting time.
“We were all called together … and they told us to remain silent,” she says.
“It's as if someone from the special services came forward and said, 'yes, it happened, and we are trying to hide it.'
Jacqueline Argent claims that she was one of three children who first jumped over the fence to look at the UFO landing site.
“At first I thought it was an experimental flying machine, but in all these years nothing like this has appeared,” she says.
Jacqueline, 58, recounts how immediately after the incident she was summoned to the director's office and interrogated by three people.
“They had quality suits and the right speech,” she recalls.
“They said, 'We suppose you saw little green men.'
“I talked to my parents about this all the time and they were quite angry.”
Stephen Karins also claims to have seen a strange phenomenon.
At the time, Seven-Year-Old Stephen was living in Dandenong. When this happened, he was walking to school with his mother after a visit to the dentist.
“In the distance, I saw a silvery object that looked like a disk. However, at first it was so far away that I was not sure what it was,”he tells news.com.au.
"The silvery disc moved with amazing speed until it was directly above us … it hung for a few seconds and then flew away as quickly as it appeared."
Susan Crostwaite, Pauline Kelly, Terry Peck, and Kevin Hurley vividly remember April 6, 1966, when mysterious objects flew overhead and landed nearby.
Logical explanation
Although federal and state agencies declined to comment on the incident at the time, government documents declassified in 2014 offer an explanation for what they saw.
The documents describe a secret radiation testing project known as the HIBAL program, a joint Australian-American initiative from 1960-1969. The goal of the program was to monitor the level of radiation in the atmosphere using large silver balloons equipped with sensors.
Each balloon carried 180 kg of cargo and was accompanied by a light aircraft, whose task was to track the balloon and open its 12-meter parachute by radio signal.
Researcher Keith Busterfield, who has studied documents from the National Archives and the former Department of Supply, believes the mysterious flying objects may have been test balloons that went off course after the launch in Mildura.
“My hypothesis is that people did not see a UFO, but a high-flying balloon, its parachute and cargo,” he tells News Corp.
"The Westall object was described as having a white / silver color, which fits the description of a balloon or parachute from the HIBAL program."
After thoroughly examining all available documents, including those found through the Freedom of Information Act, Mr. Busterfield believes that the real cause of the problem was HIBAL flight number 292.
However, he admits that he cannot confirm his theory, because the launch schedule logs for the day before the Westall incident were lost or destroyed.
“There are very few records of the actual four launches in April 1966, one of which was scheduled for April 5th, the day before Westall,” he says.
"So we have no official knowledge of how flight 292 ended."
When asked about the version of the balls, researcher Mr. Ryan expresses doubt.
“Nothing was picked up or picked up from the landing site as far as the witnesses could see,” he tells news.com.au.
"The flying saucer sat down and took off again at high speed, leaving behind wide circles with a well-defined boundary."
"When the balloon is deflated and the gondola goes down, nothing like this happens."
Hazel Edwards was an English and math teacher at Westall High School at the time, and she believes the event was overblown.
She is skeptical that overexcited children made up the story and are responsible for the media hype.
“I think there were a lot of kids there who were overexcited,” she tells news.com.au.
"Look at the so-called evidence, most of it is simply hearsay."
Ryan says that he is open to prosaic explanations, but so far none of them fit into the scheme.
“We hope that some official from the government will come forward and tell you what happened.”
The landing site has since been home to a memorial park commemorating the 1966 Westall UFO.