The following day, an article in Melbourne newspaper
The Age downplayed the incident.
Object Perhaps Balloon – An unidentified flying object seen over the Clayton-Moorabbin area yesterday morning might have been a weather balloon. Hundreds of children and a number of teachers at Westall School, Clayton, watched the object during morning break. The Weather Bureau released a balloon at
Laverton at 8:30 am and the westerly wind blowing at the time could have moved it into the area where the sighting was reported.The newspaper also said a number of small aeroplanes circled around it. However, a check later showed that no commercial, private or
RAAF pilots had reported anything unusual in the area. According to Keith Basterfield, a runaway balloon from the HIBAL
high-altitude balloon project used to monitor radiation levels after
British nuclear tests at Maralinga is a likely explanation. Basterfield located documents in the National Archives and former Department of Supply indicating a test balloon launched from
Mildura may have been blown off course "and came down in Clayton South in a paddock near Westall High School, alarming and baffling hundreds of eyewitnesses, including teachers and students". Basterfield said that HIBAL balloons had a white silver appearance and featured a parachute and gas tube trailing from the top, which is consistent with witness descriptions of the object. There were also reports that after the incident, "men in suits" cautioned witnesses not to discuss details of the secret government exercise. According to skeptic
Brian Dunning, "the weather balloon is a likely explanation for the first half of the event". Dunning suggested a nylon target drogue, like a windsock, towed by one plane for the others to chase and known to be in use by the local RAAF at the time, was "at least one very reasonable possibility for the second half". Dunning added that, as years have passed, "descriptions of what was actually seen have now become diluted with made-up descriptions by an unknown number of students who didn't see anything, and there's no way to know which is which". At the 60th anniversary, paranormal researcher
Richard Saunders reviewed the Westall case saying that he believes that "something" happened back in 1966, but thinks that it is a case of "memory fragility,
false memory, and memory contagion". The students that say they witnessed something odd in 1966 were young teens and it took until the early 2000's to "systemically interview them", by that time memoires had been embellished, contaminated, forgotten and reshapened. Reports collected at the time tell a story of how different they were, some describe a weather balloon, others say a "round humped silver disc", some saw one, other say they saw five. Different descriptions of the grass where some said they saw one circle, others many circles. Over the years as the students grew up and watched UFO documentaries, discussed it with each other as they processed what had happened, the stories evolve. False memories seem real, and these people are not lying but believe that what they remember is true. What happened at Westall in 1966 was according to Saunders, "conducive to produce false memories, ... in 1966 flying saucers were very much part of the cultural imagination, the space race was at its height, science fiction was flourishing and UFO sightings were a staple of newspaper coverage. ==Media coverage==