It has been more than 70 years since the devil man came looking for Jack Muriata.

Then, he was a little boy playing with his friends on the sandy banks of the Tully River. Today he is a much respected Girrigun elder but Muriata, 79, says time has not erased the terror of that moonless night all those years ago.

"Our mothers and grandmothers used to tell us not to go too far from camp in case the Devil Man came calling," Muriata said.

"Devil men, we Aborginals call them, or chic ah bunnahs.

"White people call them UFOs, and if you get caught by one, our grandmothers told us, you will die.

"One night I was with my friends and we wandered too far from our camp to the river.

"We were playing in the dunes when this great big ball of light, so bright, you have never seen such a light, came flying down from the sky above us.

"It lit up the whole river, and then it zoomed down low along the banks, like it was looking for us.

"My friends were yelling, 'Run! Run!' and we all took off as fast as we could back towards camp and our mothers.

"You don't want to get caught by the devil man."

Devil men, "chic a bunnahs", unidentified flying objects, call them what you will, believe in them or not – but whatever they are, and whatever name they go by, they do seem to be particularly attracted to the small, picturesque north Queensland town of Tully.

About 180km south of Cairns with a population of about 3400, Tully would be like any other pretty sugar cane town in the far north, but for several factors.

First of all, there's the famous Tully Gorge, where white-water rafting enthusiasts from around the world gather to shoot down its rapids.

Then there is Tully's extraordinary weather – with an average annual rainfall of 4252mm, it is officially Australia's wettest town and has decided to build a giant gumboot to celebrate the fact.

But if you believe the locals, Tully's most interesting claim to fame is that it is Australia's UFO headquarters, with hundreds of sightings every year.

Muriata says the Aborigines have known about Tully's strange visitors "since the beginning", and other, older locals such as 82-year-old cane farmer Albert Pennisi agree.

"Everyone who lives in Tully knows about the UFOs here," Pennisi says. "It's just that some folks choose to talk about it and some folks don't."

Pennisi is one who does – and no wonder. It was on his 83ha farm that Tully's most famous UFO sighting took place.

On the morning of January 19, 1966, Pennisi's neighbour George Pedley was driving his tractor across his banana farm when he heard a strange hissing sound.

At first Pedley – who no longer speaks publicly about his experience – thought the hissing was from his tractor tyres, but Pennisi says the sound was instead coming from a medium sized, horseshoe-shaped lagoon on Pennisi's property.

"Suddenly George saw this machine rise up from our lagoon – it rose about 30 to 40 feet (10-12m) – and then it turned on its side and just shot away." Pennisi said.

"It was gone, vanished into thin air."

But Pennisi and others who have visited the site believe it left behind a souvenir of its visit.

"George went to the lagoon straight away and he saw the water still swirling, still churning around.

"I think it really shook him up, and he came to get me but I was away. Later on when I got back we went to the lagoon together and, by crikey, did I get a shock."

Floating on Pennisi's normally unremarkable lagoon was a UFO "nest", a 9m circular mass of reeds, tightly woven in an intricate design swirling clockwise and so strong, Pennisi says, it could easily support the weight of 10 men.

Pedley's sighting of the blue-grey saucer was never repeated, but whatever made that first "nest" on Pennisi's dam kept making it.

"They came back in 1972, 1975, 1980, 1982 and 1987," Pennisi said.

"There was always the big one, but we also got about 22 smaller ones and, the strange thing is, while the big one always went clockwise, (the others) were always anti-clockwise."

Determined to explain the phenomena, Pennisi took to watching the lagoon at all hours of the night.

"I wasn't scared. I didn't take any weapons with me except my cane knife but I never did find out why they came to my farm – or why they suddenly stopped coming, but I've got a fair idea why."

Pennisi believes interest in his lagoon (carloads of people came at the height of its fame) plus the attention of the police and the air force may have made whatever – or whoever – was visiting his farm, shy off.

"We had people from all over the world arriving: UFO researchers, police, the air force investigators were watching us 24 hours a day. It was all a bit much for a cane farmer."

After an extensive investigation by the police and the RAAF, a 1966 report by the Commonwealth Aerial Phenomena Investigation Organisation (CAPIO), concluded:

"There is no explanation for the visible phenomena reported but it could have been associated with or the result of 'down draughts', 'willy willies' or 'water spouts' that are known to occur in the (north Queensland) area."

Pennisi, a down-to-earth farmer not usually given to flights of fancy, laughs at the explanation.

"They also tried to tell me it was a low-flying helicopter, a mini tornado, even a crocodile. But anyone who saw it will tell you whatever made it was not of this world, my friend.

"Before this thing happened to me, I might have been a bit sceptical, too, but things change when you see things with your own eyes."

And for many Tully locals, seeing it with their own eyes is all that it takes to turn them from sceptics into believers.

Semi-retired handyman Les Holland, 60, reckons Tully is "crawling with UFOs".

"I think I would have had trouble believing it if I hadn't seen them myself," Les says. "There's a hell of a lot of activity here.

"If you look up in the night sky in Tully, you'll see them soon enough. Lots of very bright lights, moving quickly through the sky. They're par for the course, but occasionally you see something really mind-blowing.

"A few years ago I saw this massive one hovering above us – you could see its lights: red, yellow, green. It was completely silent, just hovering there then, in a flash, it was gone."

Holland's son Morgan, 17, has also had his fair share of sightings. A keen fisherman, his late-night trips have yielded much more than the tasty jungle perch he is angling for.

"Morgan was out one night about 18 months ago looking out over Tully Heads when he very clearly saw a machine in the sky which looked like a pyramid with the top part cut off it.

"He could see bands across it . . . he could see the whole thing quite clearly. It didn't make any noise – most of them don't, they're just silently hovering.

"It didn't bother Morgan and he didn't bother it. That's the thing about Morgan, all he wants to do is fish – crocs, sharks, UFOs nothing gets in the way of his fishing."

But one young Tully mother's experiences with what she believes were UFOs were not so casual.

"I was living on a property just outside of town right on top of this hill," says the woman, who asked not to be identified.

• Story originally published by:
Sunday Mail / Qld / Australia | Frances Whiting - Jan 20.02

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