On January 19, 1966, Queensland banana farmer George Pedley witnessed a disc-shaped craft rise from a lagoon near Tully, leaving a 32-by-25-foot depression of clockwise-swirled reeds uprooted from the water. Tully police and Townsville RAAF Base were notified the same day.

Pedley reported the object as resembling two face-to-face saucers, approximately 25–30 feet across, rising with an audible hiss before climbing at 45 degrees and vanishing. Sergeant A.V. Moylan of Tully Police accompanied Pedley to the site the following morning. Flight Lieutenant Wallace of Townsville RAAF Base coordinated the formal investigation. The RAAF's official conclusion attributed the nest to a 'willy willy' circular wind vortex, though the uprooted (not merely bent) reed structure was noted as atypical of such phenomena.