Wycliffe Well: Australia’s outback UFO hotspot
Tim the Yowie Man
Tim the Yowie Man
During World War II a market garden was established near the old well to supply troops travelling to and from Darwin, and army transport driver Viv Martin spotted “a small silver craft hovering over a group of Australian soldiers” at the “nearby” Karlu Karlu/Devils Marbles. (In outback parlance 25km is considered to be nearby.)
“Dad stopped on a nearby hill to take a photo,” says Viv’s son Phil. But by the time he got there, the two flying saucers – which he describes as each being “the size of a football field” – had vanished. “The soldiers took off after the UFOs, but their tyres were shredded by tree roots,” Phil says. “They spent hours and hours looking for them, but they couldn’t find them.”
Phil still treasures the photo taken by his late dad. After the war, as more motorists travelled along the Stuart Highway, the area’s reputation as a UFO hotspot grew and grew. A roadhouse popped up, soon complemented by a holiday park and complete with accommodation.
But it was only after Lew Farkas bought the roadhouse in 1985 and transformed the run-down pit stop into the UFO Capital of Australia (complete with landing pads and alien-inspired menu items) that Wycliffe Well gained international notoriety.
Lew installed a UFO landing pad outside, while inside the walls of the roadhouse were plastered with newspaper and magazine clippings of UFO sightings.
Lew claimed it was all based on fact. Indeed, in the 1990s, Lew told me that “the previous owner kept UFOs secret to ensure prospective buyers didn’t get spooked”.
Lured by the prospect of capturing evidence of those ultra-elusive little green men, extraterrestrial enthusiasts from across the globe converged on the tiny outback outpost. Some even celebrated it as one of the top five places in the world to spot a UFO. Really!
Comparisons were drawn to Roswell in the United States, with some ufologists arguing the Wycliffe Well area’s high level of UFO activity was related to top-secret military presence in the outback – including the Pine Gap intelligence-gathering facility, about 20km south-west of Alice Springs.
In late December 2022 a catastrophic flash flood swept through the area, destroying the roadhouse – sad news for aliens and earthlings alike. Since the roadhouse was abandoned, the number of reported UFO sightings has dropped.
Perhaps the aliens are deterred by the unkempt state of the bathrooms (still labelled as being for Maliens and Femaliens), their partly smashed-up landing pad, or the decapitated state of the alien mannequins?
Of course, it could also be because fewer travellers are stopping there, their imaginations no longer stimulated by a smorgasbord of alien paraphernalia after a long and lonely drive through the outback.
Whatever your take on UFOs, Wycliffe Well Roadhouse was an outback landmark and is missed by many – not least, it seems, by those little green folk from outer space.
