Robert Schmidt: UFO’s Humbug

Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) have fascinated me all my life. We often would talk about them around the dinner table. We talked about life on billions of planets, numerous sightings through to the 1947 Roswell, New Mexico, ‘flying saucer’ claims and conspiracy theories.
My Dad was a brilliant patent attorney with the full name Johannes Carl Schmidt, OBE. He had the distinction of getting a pilot’s licence at 64, when I was sixteen; he was the oldest person at Parafield to get one.
Not long after getting his pilot’s licence he was flying to an airstrip near Goolwa when, he insisted, he saw a UFO to the right of the plane. It apparently appeared, unexplained, on the Parafield radar. I believed him; he’s my father.
In year 12 I managed to get permission for him to talk on UFOs at Concordia College. As he lectured, no mention of the UFO incident, Roswell or the countless sightings in the sixties. In fact, he used the line all sightings can be explained scientifically. The more he talked the more deflated I became. He was playing a straight bat to the whole subject. Shock, horror.
I didn’t question him. I think he was terrified reporting seeing UFOs would wreck his reputation. Forget my reputation with my school friends. They were saying, ‘Why didn’t you get the science teacher to give the lecture?’ The moral of the story is that if you’re going to get your Dad to lecture, check his notes first.