A Tasmanian Mayor Wants Answers on Lights Over Mother Cummings Peak

Mother Cummings Peak, Great Western Tiers, Tasmania (photo: Humphreymurray, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons). Daytime landscape, not the lights.

What happened

On 4 August 2026 Pulse Tasmania reported that Meander Valley Mayor Wayne Johnston wanted answers about lights that he and other locals had seen in the sky since early July. That morning he had also talked about them on ABC Radio Hobart.

Johnston told Pulse that the sightings began around 6 July, when a neighbour messaged him about strange lights over Mother Cummings Peak in the Great Western Tiers. “There was some strange sky lights, we thought they were drones to be quite honest,” he said.

The lights came back the next night. According to Pulse, they then appeared on most clear evenings, “with up to six visible at a time”, each time for around 45 minutes, “moving at sharp angles”. Johnston said they could be seen from 20 to 30 kilometres away.

Johnston did not claim aliens. He said he was hoping for a logical explanation. Drones were the leading theory, he said, until commercial drone pilots told him that drone batteries would not last for flights that long.

Timeline

• 29 August 2007: The Commons photo of Mother Cummings Peak used here is uploaded. The summit stands at about 1,260 to 1,270 metres.
• 2018: Wayne Johnston becomes Mayor of Meander Valley (UAP Globe).
• 14 September 2023: NASA’s UAP independent study team publishes its final report on how to study unexplained sky sightings.
• About 6 July 2026: A neighbour messages Johnston about lights over Mother Cummings Peak.
• 7 July 2026: The lights return the following night, according to Johnston.
• July 2026: Lights reported on most clear evenings, up to six at a time.
• 4 August 2026: ABC Radio Hobart interviews Johnston on its Mornings program. Pulse Tasmania publishes its article that afternoon.
• 6 August 2026: Coast to Coast AM picks up the story.
• 11 August 2026: The YouTube channel Interstellar Discussion posts a 10-minute-25-second commentary video on the lights.
• 4 November 2026: Sources rechecked for this rewrite. No official explanation appears in any cited source.

What believers claim

The UFO reading comes mostly from secondary outlets. Coast to Coast AM headlined it as a “series of UFO sightings”, and the US site U.S. Phenomenon framed it as a town that “can’t stop seeing orbs”. U.S. Phenomenon argued that “Persistent, multi-night sightings over a fixed location are a different animal than a single blurry photo.”

Behind the claim is the pattern described by Johnston: several lights, long durations, sharp turns, and a fixed spot over one mountain, night after night. To believers, the drone pilots’ battery objection rules out the most obvious answer.

What the research found

The sightings are real reports from a named official. Johnston gave his account on the record to two outlets on the same day, ABC Radio Hobart and Pulse Tasmania. He said he saw the lights himself after his neighbour’s message. “I just want to know whether other people had seen them,” he told Pulse, adding that many people had probably seen the lights and done nothing about it.