Welcome to Nyang Week!

Torrita

One hundred years ago, less a few days, a police constable named Wright saw two aeroplanes flying over Nyang in the Mallee, in north-western Victoria. There is no longer any such place -- it, or at least its station, was renamed Torrita (above) in 1921 -- and nor were there any aeroplanes. Or at least, there couldn't have been any: they weren't from a military aerodrome, and there weren't any civilian aircraft which could account for the sightings. They were mystery aeroplanes, and Constable Wright's sighting was in effect the trigger for an Australasian mystery aeroplane panic between March and June 1918, just as the Great War was reaching its climax.

I've already written about this panic a fair bit (i.e. a lot) -- in a peer-reviewed article, a chapter in an edited collection, a popular article, and of course on this blog (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here -- but nevertheless I thought I should mark the centenary of the Nyang Incident, and indeed the panic as a whole, in some way. So, I've got a few things planned for the next few days and beyond. Welcome to Nyang Week!

Image source: Google Maps.

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