Have you ever wondered whether or not there was some truth in the stories of monsters in Loch Ness? Here are all of the answers.
Loch Ness Monster Explained & Loch Ness Understood: The Co-Founder of the Loch Ness Centre Provides a Personal Perspecti...
Knowing that Dr Rines had opened the exhibition, my treatment of Rines' material was something of a surprise to Adrian and impressed him sufficiently that he thought he may be able to "get to work on me".
After their visit they mentioned, anonymously, to one of the staff that there was an expedition on the other side of the loch at a place called Ballachladaich. They knew that this information would find its way to me and they hoped I might make contact. Adrian was always an accomplished strategist and he wanted first contact to come from me. I only discovered all of this much later of course.
With some considerable curiosity I drove around the loch and turned into a field which led down to the lochside.
There were a number of khaki tents and various vehicles and equipment strewn around in a sort of organised chaos.
Two young men were working with a four metre yellow pontoon. Along the top was a fold of thicker rubber containing eyelets. Using rope through these, it was being lashed to wooden decking to construct some sort of floating platform. [Similar pontoon structures continued to be used for Loch Ness and Morar Project expeditions for many years to come. An even larger and more elaborate version was motorised in 1981 and became the main item of expedition equipment.]
Nowhere could I see any giant telephoto cameras, telescopes or even pairs of binoculars. Could this really be a monster hunt?
I could see other young people assembling tents, constructing strange looking objects from timber and untangling and coiling masses of blue rope.
One rather lovely young student wearing hot-pants was sewing a trawl net which was patently too small for catching Nessie.
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Obviously this expedition was different from its predecessors. It appeared to have a similarly multi-disciplined approach to Roy Mackal's expeditions in the last years of the Loch Ness Phenomenon Investigation Bureau, but without any obvious accompanying monster-hunting paraphernalia.
A tall dark haired, heavily bearded individual walked up from the lochside to meet me. With him was a comparatively diminutive bald headed man with the air of a schoolteacher, which I later discovered he actually was. These were Adrian Shine and Ricky Gardiner.
After some pleasantries I was escorted into the largest of the tents, apparently the mess tent. I cannot remember the conversation exactly, but they were obviously feeling out my character and trying to decide if I was the sort of person with whom they could work.
They asked me what I thought about various pictures and then showed me how one or two of Frank Searle's had been faked. Ricky also presented some pictures taken from the exact location of the Lachlan Stuart photograph. These clearly demonstrated that the objects were in very shallow water.
Next they brought out two or three photographs of a folded polythene sheet underwater. I was, I must admit, amazed at how similar the pictures were to the famous flipper photograph.
