Digitized Australian UAP related material held in the Archives for the Unexplained (AFU)

The AFU 

The AFU website advises that:

"Archives for the Unexplained (AFU) was founded in 1973 and now has more than 2 kilometers of shelves...currently house collections and archives from a large number of internationally well-known researchers and authors like Hilary Evans, Luis Schonherr, Bob Rickard, W. Raymond Drake, Perry Petrakis, Cynthia Hind, Peter Rogerson and Willy Wegner...." 

The AFU also houses correspondence, and reports files from a number of organizations. They are physically located in Norrkoping, Sweden.

Downloads

The download section of the site holds 12 directories, and a search through these, reveals that there is much digitized Australian UAP related content. My perusal of the directories revealed the following:

(1) Audio - Wendy Connor's Faded Discs collection - disc 3.

* Track 03 - "Medical files: UFO. A rare Australian radio show dramatizing an actual event. This is the earliest known recoding using the acronym UFO, coined by Capt. Edward Ruppelt. 1952."

* Track 13 - "William Gill lectures in the United Kingdom regarding his UFO encounter in Papua, New Guinea. Ends abruptly. June 26, 1959."

* Track 17 - P.F. Norris, Australian researcher, audio letter of January 14, 1965, to Maj. Donald E. Keyhoe, Director of NICAP."

* Track 23 - "Colin McCarthy lectures on the UFO in Australia from the early 1950s to the early 1960s. January 7, 1967.

* Track 24 - "Andrew Tobias gives a short talk on Ufology in Australia. January 7, 1967.

* Track 25 - "James E. McDonald comments regarding his tour of Australia radio. July 1967."

* Track 42 - "Maureen Puddy of Frankston, Australia regarding her abduction. July 27, 1972."

* Track 50 - "Paul Norman of the Victorian UFO Research Society (VUFORS) is interviewed on radio. October 20 and 24, 1968."

(2) Books - no Australian authors are listed.

(3) Clippings - See (9) Topics, countries, Australia.

(4) Databases - Wendy Connors' Faded Disc archives. See (1) Audio above.

(5) Discussion lists.

There are three relevant discussion lists shown:

a. UFO Research List.

b. UFO UpDates.

c. Usernet.

Various Australian researchers, like me, contributed to material on these discussion lists.

(6) PhD Dissertations - No Australian dissertations listed. However, here is a link to my own listing. 

(7) Documents - Australia.

Between 2003-2008 the Disclosure Australia Project mined the National Archives of Australia for Australian government UAP related files. As a result of this effort plus others during the period 2009-2024, over 100 relevant files were located and digitized at cost.

Here on the AFU website, you will find digitized copies of these files, which tell the story of the Australian government's interest in the topic of UAP from 1951 to 1996. For a comprehensive study of what was found on these files there is a document available, plus a listing of the files found. 

(8) Magazines - Australia.

Australia has a rich history of civilian UAP research groups, Since, around 1954 there have been dozens of publications produced by these organizations. The AFU collection draws upon 18 Australian UAP related Newsletters, Digests, Journals etc.

(9) Topics- Countries - Australia - clippings

Isaac Koi from the United Kingdon collected 3500 newspaper clippings from the TROVE digitized Australian newspaper collection which can be found here in the AFU archive.

(10) Transcripts - of podcasts etc.

(11) UFO reports - nil from Australia.

(12) Websites - nil from Australia.

Note:

Congratulations to both Isaac Koi and AFU for preserving the above Australian material.