Annie Farinaccio is an Australian civilian best known for her reported observation of an unidentified aerial craft near the Harold Holt Naval Communications Station at Northwest Cape, Western Australia Exmouth, in late 1991.1 Farinaccio grew up in the Exmouth community, which had a notable American military presence; she has stated that at her school pupils would recite “God Save the Queen” and then swear allegiance to the American flag.2
The sighting occurred at approximately 20:00 when Farinaccio, aged 25 at the time,3 had called a cab towards the Harold Holt base area.4 She was travelling in the vehicle alongside two officers from the Australian Federal Police.5 During the journey, the driving officer looked out of his window, said “it’s back”, and asked his colleague to retrieve a camera.6 Farinaccio describes looking upward and observing a diamond-shaped craft hovering directly above the car.7 She estimated the object to be approximately two to three car lengths in size,8 deep grey in colour,9 and carrying lights at its underside.10 She noted that no sound emanated from it.11 According to her testimony, the craft followed the vehicle along the road for approximately one kilometre before appearing to land in scrub a few hundred metres from the road.12 Farinaccio further describes the object as having a very elongated pointed front with a diamond shape, lighting along the spine and on each wing, and ridges with a three-dimensional effect.13 She states it subsequently shot straight upward within seconds, faster than could be watched.14 The two Australian Federal Police officers told Farinaccio that the same object had followed them the previous night.15
The photographs taken by the police officers during the incident were later confiscated along with the camera, after having been developed at a printing shop inside the base.16 According to Farinaccio’s account, one of the officers subsequently described the photographs as clearly showing an intelligently guided craft, hovering just above the ground rather than physically landed.17
A few days after the sighting, two military police from the Harold Holt base arrived at Farinaccio’s workplace and insisted she accompany them, with an implied threat should she refuse.18 She was escorted into the top-secret section of the US base, where she found the two Australian Federal Police officers already present, their heads bowed and, in her description, appearing broken.19 During the interrogation, officials told Farinaccio that what she had seen was a weather balloon.20 One of the police officers warned her to stop speaking, saying “Please shut up… Shut up before you get us all killed."21 Farinaccio has stated her belief that the purpose of the interrogation was to keep her quiet.22 Journalist Ross Coulthart has stated that he has multiple witnesses to what transpired and is in no doubt that it constituted a secret American investigation into the sighting.23
When shown an image of the Hopeless Diamond stealth prototype, Farinaccio stated that it looked exactly like what she saw, with the exception that the top of the craft she observed had more cuts in a three-dimensional shape and the tail appeared cut off.24 Coulthart has offered the opinion that the object Farinaccio witnessed was hovering and displayed what he characterised as hypersonic instantaneous velocity, departing without a sonic boom and in complete silence.25 Farinaccio gave her account publicly in the 2021 documentary The UFO Phenomenon, produced by 7NEWS Spotlight, in which she stated that she and the US military witnesses had seen an unidentified flying object and that the US military had wanted to know what they had seen and “wanted it shut up."26