The min min LIGHTS

By: Al Finegan

Outback Queensland is a place of many mysteries, old and new. But the most enduring of all, is the phenomenon of the Min Min lights. They have never been fully explained. There are, of course, learned theories from professors, unable to accept the possibility of an unnatural cause. Are they the ghostly apparitions of unhappy dead, or perhaps evidence of UFOs from somewhere else in the universe? Or are they a natural manifestation from the unique conditions of the far west of Qld? Many believe they are a supernatural occurrence.

Of course, these mysterious Min Min lights always appear after dark. They were first noted by Europeans near the nowabandoned western Qld settlement of Min Min. The lights seem to have magical qualities, sometimes following observers, even as they speed away in vehicles, while at other times, seeming to retreat shyly. They have become a legend of Australian folklore. Thousands of sightings of the lights have now been reported. They have been known to follow people on horseback, in cars, and on foot, sometimes for hundreds of kilometres. The lights generally travel about a metre from the ground and are often mistaken for the headlights of another vehicle. A recent accident near Boulia involved a car that crashed off the road. The driver swore that he had to dodge a powerful headlight coming straight for him, and he swerved to avoid a head-on collision. Some rather spooked cockies have drawn their rifles and fired at the lights in fear. According to authoritative pub-talk doctrine, when shot at, the lights disappear, very rapidly, only to reappear soon after. It is also widely affirmed that anyone who actually follows the lights and catches up with them, is never seen again. A number of unexplained disappearances have been blamed on the Min Min lights. You better believe it.

A typical Min Min light is circular, about one-quarter the size of a full Moon and has fuzzy, moving edges, like a buzzing bee swarm. Min Min lights are usually white, but can be green, yellow, red, or occasionally after a few beers, blue and red flashing. The fuzzy orbs can dance around erratically left to right, up and down and back and forth. Occasionally, a single Min Min light can suddenly split into two separate lights. Spooky!

During the nineteenth century, People in Hay NSW often saw a light that appeared while travelling on a mail coach across One Tree Plain. No matter how fast men galloped after the light, no one was able to catch up. The place where this occurred is called the “Phantom Mile”, and is a legend to the locals.

Stories about the lights can be found in several Aboriginal cultures predating the European colonisation. They claimed that the number of sightings had increased in conjunction with the ingress of Europeans to the outback. “Min Min” was the Aboriginal name for the lights, and passed on to an inn built in the 19th century, about 100 kilometres east of the town of Boulia in the channel country of Central West Qld. Initially, the pub thrived as the Qld frontier expanded and a small township grew up around it. With droughts and floods ravaging the western region in the late nineteenth century, the population gradually dwindled, and during WW1 the pub burned down. Since the time that the hotel was built, there have been regular reports of strange lights dancing through the night sky in the area. The lights are described in a bewildering variety of ways: a small, large, single, or numerous globes, changing in colour, standing still, moving slowly, moving fast, or sometimes following startled travellers for miles. When settlers first saw the lights, they generally interpreted them as marsh lights, explained in British folklore as ghosts of disembodied souls, sometimes referred to as “corpse candles”.

A number of the local Aboriginal tribes insisted that they were not of a natural origin. They believed that in some cases they were the spirits of stillborn children. They have also been said to be linked to an Aboriginal burial ground. A variation on this theme is that the lights first appeared after Aborigines were being killed by settlers. This is possibly a reference to the incident at Battle Mountain near Mount Isa in 1884, when several hundred Kalkadoon people were reported to have been massacred.

Similar phenomena from around the world have been recorded. These are also widely associated with ill luck, evil and death. The earliest accounts of the Min Min lights by Europeans in Australia, generally had them rising from the cemetery behind the Min Min hotel. This establishment had apparently gained a bad reputation for encouraging stockmen to drink down their pay cheques, giving them no change, while plying them with rotgut alcohol. It was said that many in their subsequent inebriated state were robbed, and murdered. This embellishment added an extra dimension of spookiness to the legend. Perhaps the lights were the vengeful ghosts of these murdered men?

The first coherent written account of the lights came from Henry LeMond, a station manager who saw them in 1912. “During the middle of winter, I had to go to Slashers Creek at the start of the lamb marketing. I did not leave the head station until about 2am, expecting to get to Slashers well before daylight. After crossing the Hamilton River, I was out on the downs, when I saw the headlight of a car coming straight for me. Cars, I thought, though they were not common, were not rare. I took note of the thing, singing and trotting as I rode, and I even estimated the strength of the approaching light, by the way it picked out individual hairs in the mare's mane. Suddenly I realised it was not a car. It remained in one bulbous ball instead of dividing into two headlights, which it should have done as it came closer. It was too green and glary for a headlight. It floated too high for any car. There was something eerie about it. I ceased to sing, though I kept the mare at the trot. She suddenly stopped. She propped her forelegs wide, lifted her head, pricked her ears, and then snorted her challenge to the unknown. The light came on, floating as airily as a bubble, moving with comparative slowness. Though at the time I did not check its rate of progression,

I should estimate now that it was moving at about 10 mph and anything from 5 to 10 feet above the ground. Its size, I would say, at an approximate guess, would be about that of a new risen moon. That light and I passed each other, going in opposite directions. I kept an eye on it while it was passing, and I'd say it was about 200 yards off when suddenly, it just faded and died away. It did not go out with a snap. Its finishing was more like the gradual was much greater intensity than that type of light. It illuminated the ground around it, but I was too far away from it to see any detail.”

While the mysterious lights continued to be a known - unknown phenomena, serving as a much discussed (and exaggerated) topic over many a beer, experts tried their best to portray a logical explanation. Professor Jack Pettigrew, who was the Director of UQ’s Vision, fading of an electric bulb. The mare acknowledged the dousing of the light by another snorting whistle. It must have been at least 5 miles or so before I lifted up my voice again in song.”

In May 1981, Detective Sergeant Lyle Booth, of the Police Stock Investigation Squad, Cloncurry, was camped at a water hole about 60 kilometres east of town. Waking at about 11pm, he saw what looked like a car's headlights on the road. The Police Commissioner published a report of Booth’s statement of the sighting. He said that the lights appeared to be moving, but it did not seem to be getting any closer.

“I know this is hard to grasp, but that is how it appeared.” He described the light as white in colour, similar to the light thrown by a headlight. He went back to sleep then awoke about 1am and saw another light about 100 metres southwest of where he'd seen the earlier one. He reported that, “It was not as bright as the first light and had a different yellow colour to it, about the colour of a gas light which is turned down very low and is about to go out, but it

Touch and Hearing Research Centre, provided an optical explanation and data about Min Min lights in an edition of Clinical and Experimental Optometry, the journal of the Optometrists Association of Australia. He used his skills in the vision sciences combined with extensive first-hand experience of the Diamantina region of Western Queensland at night. He was studying an elusive nocturnal bird, the letter-winged kite in the region, where he encountered the phenomenon. “The Min Min light occurs when light, from a natural or man-made source, is refracted to an observer who is tens, or even hundreds, of kilometres away, by an inverted mirage, or Fata Morgana,” he said. “Named after the Morgan fairy, who was reputed to be able to conjure cities on the surface of the sea ice, the Fata Morgana has a real physical phenomenon, being caused by a temperature inversion. A cold, dense layer of air next to the ground (or sea, or sea ice) carries light far over the horizon to a distant observer without the usual dissipation and radiation, to produce a vivid mirage that baffles and enchants because of its unfamiliar optical properties.“ In a celebrated and authenticated example, the Irish sea cliffs were seen floating in vivid greens and browns above the calm Atlantic, by observers on a ship more than a thousand kilometres away. The Professor also said, “Wonderful during the day, such Fata Morgana can be terrifying at night when a single light source gives no hint that it is actually part of a mirage emanating from a great distance. Even hardened Outback observers can break down when they are unable to interpret the unusual optical properties of the light in terms of their own, very different, past experiences. The unusual terrain of the Channel Country makes the favourable atmospheric conditions more likely, while its isolation increases the impact of a single light source, since the observer knows that it cannot be produced locally but sees it apparently there in front.” The Professor went on, “… some people would prefer not to have the Min Min’s mystique probed by city slickers. I apologise to them. However, knowing more about the unusual weather conditions responsible, could improve one’s chances of seeing it.” He later added, “Increased knowledge has certainly not lessened my own wonderment at the phenomenon on those infrequent occasions.”

OK, good try professor. I prefer the story that it is the ghosts of those who have passed on in terrible deaths, still hovering in the atmosphere to remind the living of the bad deeds of the past…

Despite the inconsistencies among, and within, reported sightings, the scepticism of scientists and the existence of a number of possible natural explanations, the notion that the Min Min lights are supernatural in origin lives on. Tourism promoters refer to them, and ufologists investigate them. Whatever their origin, the lights have become one of Australia's most persistent tales of the unexplained.

Crosswords - QUICK & CRYPTIC

Across

1 Analysis of strategies in terms gains and losses in competitive situations (4,6)

7 Be Macron? (anag) (8)

8 Bit of foliage (4)

9 Curse (4)

10 Ghost (7)

12 Object vocally (4,2,1,4)

14 Avoiding food (7)

16 eg March 15 in ancient Rome (4)

19 Cajole (4)

20 Area for journalists dealing with current affairs (8)

21 Tasks for pupils (10)

Cyrus

Across

7 Bloke with a club fighting over a chicken? (6)

8 Tended to be fed patiently (6)

9 A class under construction? (4)

10 New squad has a point, with some hesitation - what a waste (8)

11 Nines a record playing for coppers (7)

13 After the first gin, the publican had a vision (5)

15 Venom from a pest I sprayed (5)

17 Notice log on link for a trip up the canal (7)

20 Old boy is the only one with vacant title - but out of date (8)

21 The animal has connections by the sound of it (4)

22 Tart holds informer at sea, illegally (6)

23 High tea cut short and served - to an also ran - possibly Henry! (6)

Solutions

Down

1 Swedish-American film actress, whose last film appeared in 1942, d. aged 84 in 1990 (5)

2 Imitative (7)

3 General atmosphere of a place or situation (4)

4 Paragon (8)

5 Ancient artefact (5)

6 The ___ and the Carpenter (Lewis Carroll) (6)

11 Become (4,4)

12 Old car horn (6)

13 Cook insufficiently (7)

15 Very unpleasant and provocative (5)

17 Half-Vulcan Star Trek character (5)

18 Missing without authorisation (4)

Cyrus Solution 196

Quick Solution 196

Down

1 Let loose with provisos to find dad a part (6)

2 Ingredient a mite well cooked (4)

3 Broken mess had to be cleaned up (7)

4 A brazen nuisance showing signs of laziness (5)

5 Need to run around church after doctor got soaked (8)

6 A cavity found during the break (6)

12 Is Latino an aberration for a subject? (8)

14 Where-ever cod is cooked with the lid on (7)

16 Left in charge after the bar opens to everybody (6)

18 Fitting concern for new skirt (6)

19 Family hand-me-downs! I hear, too, they are casual wear but trendy (5)

21 Mariner's diaries can be set on fire? (4)

Ingredients

2 tbsps coconut oil (you can use butter if you prefer)

1 tablespoon coconut sugar (swap for brown sugar if you want to)

2 tbsps honey (rice malt syrup if you would like these to be vegan)

4 cups cornflakes (if you want these treats to be gluten free, buy gluten free cornflakes)

1 cup shredded coconut

1 cup sultanas

Instructions

• Preheat your oven to 150º degrees celsius.

• Combine the cornflakes, shredded coconut and sultanas in a bowl.

• In a small saucepan heat the sugar, honey and coconut oil until frothy.

• Add the hot ingredients to the dry ingredients. Mix well.

• Spoon into 15 cupcake patty papers, ensuring you get some sultanas in each one (they may have fallen to the bottom of the mix).

• Bake for 10 minutes, then remove from the oven.

• Allow to cool before eating. (some sultanas may blow up in the oven in size, but will deflate again once cool).

Notes: Once cool, keep in an airtight container in the fridge for 7 days.

Swaps: coconut oil can be swapped for butter coconut sugar can be swapped for brown sugar honey can be swapped for rice malt syrup to make these vegan use gluten free cornflakes to make these gluten free