Elizabeth Woollatt was born on 1 July 1910, the youngest daughter of Samuel Bancroft Woollatt, a pioneering veterinary surgeon who settled at Connington farm near Rosetta in the KwaZulu-Natal midlands. Her father became a successful shorthorn farmer and dedicated polo player who introduced young people to the sport. Elizabeth graduated from St. Anne's Diocesan College in Pietermaritzburg before heading to Europe, where she studied art and music in Florence, then completed a four-year meteorology diploma at Cambridge. Her first husband taught her to fly, and during a 1937 flight from Durban to Baragwanath in a Leopard Moth aircraft, the couple reportedly watched a saucer-shaped object approach their plane, coast alongside it, then depart. The encounter went largely unremarked upon at the time.

The hilltop that became central to Klarer's story sits on the farm Whyteleafe in the Natal midlands, where her sister May lived. In 1954, May told Elizabeth that Zulu people in the area were reporting sightings of the impundulu, the lightning bird, in the sky. Elizabeth drove from Johannesburg with her children, and on 27 December, she ascended what would come to be called Flying Saucer Hill. There, she claimed, a craft some 60 feet in diameter descended to hover three metres above the ground, emitting only a soft hum. She described meeting a being she called Akon and, in subsequent years, claimed a romantic relationship that produced a child born on a distant planet called Meton. For the rest of her life, she returned to that hilltop every 7 April to commemorate their union.

Klarer attracted both devoted followers and sharp critics. George Adamski, the most famous contactee of the era, visited South Africa in the late 1950s specifically to meet her and compare notes on what he called the "space brothers." Ufologist Kitty Smith claimed her own sighting of Akon's ship in January 1984 after reading about Klarer in Outspan magazine. But skeptics questioned the evidence. Edgar Sievers, a ufologist from Pretoria, noted that Klarer's family confirmed she left the homestead alone and suggested the photographs she produced looked suspiciously like a car hubcap, though he conceded no known hubcap sufficiently matched the disc in the images. Ufologist Thomas Streicher concluded that Klarer's claims were poorly substantiated, speculating she was perhaps a fantasy-prone individual.

Klarer died on 9 February 1994, but her story endures as one of the strangest chapters in South Africa's cultural history. She published her account in a book titled Beyond the Light Barrier, and podcasts and documentaries continue to explore her claims decades later. What gives the tale its lasting texture is the collision of worlds it represents: the rational training of Cambridge and the mysticism of a farm in the Natal midlands, the scientific language of meteorology and the dreamlike imagery of alien romance, the Zulu tradition of the lightning bird and the Western fascination with flying saucers. Whether one sees Klarer as a visionary, a fantasist, or something in between, her hilltop near Rosetta remains one of the more unusual landmarks in KwaZulu-Natal.