Min Min Lights

A shot at the Min Min Light ABC RADIO North Queensland

Thursday, 14 July  2005 

Reporter: Julia Harris (online)

Presenter: Andrew Saunders

Herda Szijarto has been delivering mail to remote stations in the Boulia district for 25 years, travelling the 470km round trip each Wednesday and Saturday.

This district is also home to the mysterious phenomenon of the Min Min light, and Mrs Szijarto has spotted the Min Min may times in her travels through the outback.

She says she first saw it out near an old windmill in an area called Bulla Woolla late in 1978. "I saw a big round ball, a beautiful orange colour - trees standing there and he came straight through, and of course not knowing what it was, I got sort of scared".

At this stage Mrs Szijarto hadn't heard about the Min Min lights and kept very quiet about her experience.

During the many years of driving the mail run in the outback around Boulia after that initial experience she says she has seen the Min Min light heaps of times.

One experience she will never forget was the time she was delivering fuel and was out on the Chatswood road. A friend had suggested she take a gun in case she hit a cow and she says "this Min Min light was coming fairly close and I said right, I couldn't take photos of you, I'm gonna shoot ya, and I know I shot it because it was so big and I couldn't possibly miss it, and all it did was go away as if to say 'well you're a lousy shot.'"

Mrs Szijarto is originally from Austria and she immigrated to Australia with her Hungarian husband who was a refugee, and then moved to Boulia from Mount Isa in 1978. She started the mail run in 1980 and retired on the 30th June this year. She hasn't been looking forward to retirement because she says "the mail run is an interesting job, you get to meet lots and lots of good friends, and it's a day out for us".