Raymond Harold Brooke
Raymond Harold Brooke was born on 30 April 1926 in the United Kingdom. By age 12 he was a member of the scout movement, and spent time hiking and camping on the Pennine Moors and in Derbyshire. He became interested in astronomy; and at age 17, when he joined the Royal Navy, he found that a few of his ship's crew were also interested in that same topic.
In the 1950's and 1960's, Ray's interest on the topics of extraterrestrial life, and other planets, developed further. He engaged in discussions with other such interested individuals around him.
In Australia
In December 1963, Ray, together with his wife Kathleen (b.1928); Andrew (b. 1952) and Wendy (b. 1956) departed the United Kingdom and arrived in Adelaide on 15 January 1964. [National Archives of Australia file series AP366/1.]
After moving to Australia, around 1968, Ray started to attend meetings of the Australian Flying Saucer Research Society (AFSRS), during the era, late 1960's, that Marc Dodd was the group's President. Ray became friendly with another member of the group, Ted Shrubb. During one discussion I had with Ray about the AFSRS; he recalled that in those days the meetings were very social events, with not much research being conducted.
Later, Ray joined another Adelaide based UAP group; UFO Research South Australia (UFORSA) of which I was a member. In 1973, Ray and I, with two other group members, travelled to a remote location near Kimba, on South Australia's Eyre Peninsular; to investigate a classic entity case. In that place, a number of independent witnesses had each reported to Police that they had seen an unusual object on the ground, just off the side of the road.
Within UFORSA, Ray held number of positions over the years, and spent numerous hours talking to members of the public as the group's public relations officer. He travelled all over South Australia, and interstate, interviewing and investigating. During that time, Ray attended a number of state level and national level UAP conferences.
Mundrabilla
In 1988, the world famous Mundrabilla, 'car lifted off the road' UAP case occurred. Ray and I spent two whole days constantly responding to the telephone calls of the world media who took an interest in what had occurred to the Knowles family while travelling between Perth, Western Australia and Melbourne, Victoria. Ray appeared on the lead item of the six o'clock Channel 7 television news when they broke the Mundrabilla story.
On and off, Ray continued to be associated with UFORSA, until it went into recession in 2007.
Ray's views
Ray's views on the UAP phenomenon never changed across time. For sixty years he thought that there are other life forms elsewhere in the universe; some far more advanced than us in the field of technology; and that there were things that we haven't even got close to yet as far as out knowledge goes.
On the question of 'abduction' reports, he thought that some of these had merit, and an answer to them would help solve some of the mysteries and possibly put us on the right track to solving the UAP enigma. In addition, he hoped that one day, governments might provide information that would help in our quest.
A sad loss
The last time I met Ray, was at his 90th birthday party, where family and friends got together to celebrate that occasion. I had the pleasure of sitting with Ray and Jane Brooks (another past member of UFORSA) and talked about UAP, extraterrestrial life and other such topics.
Ray passed away on 19 September 2018, aged 92. 'Beloved husband of Kathleen (deceased), loved father to Andrew, Wendy and Louise. Father-in-law to Rhonda, Ken and Mark. Grandfather to Annette and Patrick, Rachel, Aaron and Val, Kathryn, Emma and Ben, Jarrod, Teagan and Aidan. Great grandfather to Reid, Isabel, Riley, Leonardo, Hunter, Charlotte and Dane.'
Ray will be sadly missed.
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