If by “fundamentalist skeptic types” you mean of the ilk of Klass, Menzel, Sheaffer et.al, I’m not aware of any detailed interviews they undertook. Just the usual armchair investigation, such as Klass’ “he didn’t behave the way I would” MO, thus the whole incident is suspect. Klass tried to reduce it to the “big white father” says you all saw UFOs (to the natives), totally inaccurately portraying the missionary/mission dynamic in place at Boianai. Menzel had Bill Gill myopic without glasses, or with incorrectly prescribed glass, again wrong. Daniel Cohen had Bill as probably non-existent and the whole saga as an unreliable tale, simply because he hadn’t done his homework and verified the extent of the evidence. Because he couldn’t access the evidence, it probably didn’t exist. The Magonia people trotted out the “false horizon” and misinterpretation of a distorted view of a squid boat crew. None of these satisfactorily addresses the event.

If by “fundamentalist” you mean the religious view, Rev Gill didn’t seem to engage with extreme religious views either. In his last lecture in 2003 he did somewhat light-heartedly invoke the nexus of “aliens” and “angels”, but in reality to him it remained unexplained. The “alien” view seemed to fit for him but he wasn’t dogmatic about it and was willing to consider any well reasoned explanation. Many were offered but none explained the sightings to his satisfaction, nor to mine.

Regards,

Bill

I corrected the “Papua,” but not the “Boianai” in the segment that I lifted from the UFO Evidence site. Both are corrected now.

Was Rev. Gill ever interviewed by any fundamentalist skeptic types? I would like to know what he said to them, and if they tried to tell him what he actually witnessed!

What did Gill think he had seen, when he found out that the sighting was probably not some sort of experimental aircraft?

I apoligize for all the questions, but you actually knew him and can provide firsthand accounts from him. If you have or know of a website with this info, please provide a link.

Best,

Greg

Thanks for drawing attention to my tribute to Rev Bill Gill - a thoroughly decent and honest man who I liked as a person, as we got to know each other over the decades. His experience of the Boianai “visitants” is a fascinating one.

I should note that the summary on the “UFO evidence” site gets things a bit wrong, eg. “Bosinai Papas” should read “Boianai Papua”, but then they lift the detail of the story after that from my 1996 book “The OZ Files”.

Sad to see Bill Gill’s passing.

Regards,

Bill Chalker

I have wondered about these facts of the case as well. Since Gill probably had more experience with technology (as a former member of the Australian armed services) he assumed that the craft was some sort of advanced hovercraft and apparently communicated this to the people around him. Since he wasn’t freaked out, no one else was either. The “people” on he craft looked and acted like any human beings would, so there was no question in the witnesses’ minds that they were just other people doing something a little out of the ordinary. Who knows? Perhaps they were.

*the sky remained overcast during the sightings. To anyone who has seen the movie “Close Encounters” that tiny piece of info shouldn’t appear trivial.

*The occupants of the craft showed a mild interest on the people below the at the most. Indulging them in waving back and all that, but overall they were more focused on doing their business (whatever that might be).

*Maybe because of this, Father Gillis first impression was that they were normal men, american or australian pilots testing some new hovercraft machine or something. That would explain why he also lost interest in the object after 4 hours and went to dinner.

*The “openness” the people displayed. They might have been be slightly fearful of the object, but they did not seem to consider it a threat, nor they were extremely entusiastic about them, at least not the way a modern UFO cultist (think prophet Yahweh) would act if something like that appeared to him.