A New Zealand Crop Circle?

Is it the influence of New Age vegetarian extremists?: the latest paranormal enthusiasms are cress seed-sprouting (it's a more growing experience than metal spoon-bending) and crop circles. We have Time Magazine's authority for crop circles having occurred here, and not only the British Skeptics but the New Zealand Skeptics would welcome any information about the crop circle phenomenon in this country.

When newspapers throughout the world were giving front page treatment to the Kaikoura UFOs, The Marlborough Express, the daily of the area favoured by the UFOs, made the lead story of its 3 January 1979 issue an article about—a flattened pea paddock. (It is true the Kaikoura UFOs were also on the front page and the lead story did make a passing reference to those mysterious lights.)

Was the anonymous farmer's flattened pea crop New Zealand's first (or only) crop circle?

The flattened area actually wasn't circular. It was "a track about 4m wide" which appeared across a field and ended in "a circular impression, 4m in diameter". 4m may seem rather wide for a "track". We are not told how long it was and so can't be sure whether this was the true, original "tadpole" pattern (see Time article, opposite) or perhaps a sort of "sperm" pattern.

The peas were undamaged which made the farmer doubt that a whirlwind was responsible, and shows the occurrence exhibited at least one characteristic of the classic crop circle.

Mervyn Dykes in his Strangers in Our Skies (INL Print, 1981) refers to the Marlborough Express story and it seems to be his sole source of information except that he adds four new elements:

• the track was "winding";
• the track ended "'at some trees";
• the track finished in an "anti-clockwise swirl";
• the crop was later harvested normally.

The third of these points will be of interest to crop circle buffs, but I could detect no evidence of any swirl from The Marlborough Express's photograph. The fourth point may be merely an extrapolation by Dykes since the paper's story made it clear that in the day following the discovery of the track/circle the field had been irrigated and the flattened area become considerably less visible.

Dyke's book also refers to a "flattened perfect circle of water weeds just over 4 metres across in a dewpond" at Puketutu in the King Country which appeared in 1969 and 1970. Since this clockwise swirl was not in an arable crop this may be considered a peripheral case. The famous Ngatea circle of dead scrub (1969) is definitely beyond the perimeter.*

• P.S. No it's not! I have sighted Delgado and Andrews' "Circular Evidence". They refer only to the Ngatea circle.