Flashing lights in the sky - Northern NSW, Australia

This is my first post so sorry if it's in the wrong section -

I was outside with my girlfriend about ten minutes ago having a cigarette when we saw some strange lights in the sky. First of all we saw a few flashes of light kinda like lightning, but it seemed to be appearing in patches. Or maybe stretching across the sky. Then there was kind of like a beam of late that went from one side of the sky to the other, similiar to one of those search lights they shine into the sky to advertise things (but i'm not living anywhere near anything commercial).

Was pretty strange! Just wondering if anyone else in the area has seen anything? Also i noticed a flash of light in the sky a few hours ago so it could have been going on for some time; not too sure. I thought lightning at first but there was no thunder and upon closer inspection the light was behaving rather strangely...

Hoping someone else saw this!! I'm in Byron Bay, if there's any users in the northern NSW area reading have a look outsidee!

Just curious....was there any sound with it? I know you said no thunder, but did you hear anything else?

Great story...but i don't wanna use my imagination. Get a hq cam recorder and start filming it. Pls post the video so we can have a look at it...sounds interesting though

Eeek sorry on the late reply; i fell asleep. I didn't hear any unusual sounds at all asides from the ocean, which seemed amplified tenfold... As for getting a hq cam, i can't afford that shiz! I was going to take footage on my camera but the quality is way too low. I don't think it would show up all of what we saw either; sometimes the light would move from one side of the sky to the other in less than a second & other times it was as so dull we could barely see it travelling...

Can anyone think of an explanation for what we saw?

Was it warm or hot outside? It gets really hot in the summer where I live, and sometimes we have what we call heat lightning.It's like the whole skyline lights up....not a bolt.. It looks the same as what you described, and a lot of times, no thunder. It's just a guess.

I wouldn't say it was warm outside, 'twas pretty cold. But earlier in the day it was warm after a few days of rain if that's of any importance... But it seemed to me like there were two different light shows going on; there was the bright flashing light that would crawl across half the sky for a split second, and then there was this search beam kinda thing that would wave across the sky. The latter didn't seem like any form of lightning.

It might have been your local police, out for a joy ride to terrorize the locals in one of their helicopter toys. Are you sure it wasn't sheet lightning? Was it out towards the ocean or in towards dry land? Thanks

There's never police helicopters out where i am, it's rather quiet. && i didn't see a helicopter + the beam was coming from the ground waving across the sky, then it'd re appear in a different spot a few minutes later...

The lights weren't coming from the ocean, opposite direction. Although i do live less than ten minute walk from the beach if that's of any relevance.

hmmm Byron huh ...you are sure there was only tobacco in that cigarette you had. lol just kidding, couldn't help but take a shot at it.

reply to post by lavenlaar


The herbs here aren't THAT good man, i don't think anything is! There's lightning tonight, went outside to have a look at it and it's clearly distuinguishable from what i saw the other night... Strange

reply to post by YouNeedMt

This may sound crazy but I was driving through Georgia (US) on March 31st 2011 about 9:00pm and my friend and I saw something in the sky we could not explain either. Maybe it was the same thing? Was yours like a ball of yellow light that lit up then disapeared and reapeared agian 5 times in perfect horizontal increments? Then like flashes stobe stars started popping from out of no where then started moving around the sky like bugs. Then disappeared agian. Just not sure what we saw.

reply to post by hawkdawg77


:O We saw the same thing??? That's wacky, considering your on the other side of the world.

The way you described what you saw is how i should have described what i saw; sounds identical.... I guess that kind of rules out any form of lightning if we both saw it? Unless it's just some extremely far out coincidence; but i highly doubt that.

on the 7th of May at 11:00 i was over my firends house his mum saw an amber, white and red blinking object in the sky. she got a few of us outside to see. it was pretty creepy but the biggest news came from my friends uncle, he said that he has seen those things for about 3 months or more. we were going to take a picture but it faded out before we could snap a picture. CREEPY!

Aurora Australis?

I've seen the Aurora Borealis make the entire sky strobe and shimmer with weird wave like patterns before on a few occasions. (Not often though, because I don't live that far north.) It's not just the green ripples or whatever. In a way it's like the faint glow from a searchlight beam with a blue-ish cast, but moving across the sky sideways instead of from the ground. So I don't see why it's southern hemisphere counterpart would be that much different.

I wonder if there was any interesting solar activity that would go with such hypothesis?

Too bad there aren't pics.