Victoria: A dazzling meteor blazed through the skies of central Victoria on Sunday night, thrilling residents and sending shockwaves quite literally across the region. Witnesses described an intensely bright fireball tearing through the night accompanied by a loud, resounding boom.
The sighting triggered a wave of excitement online, with numerous videos and firsthand accounts flooding the Australian Meteor Reports Facebook group.
Among those who witnessed the extraordinary event was Fryerstown local Saskia Reus-Smit. She described the meteor as passing “directly over my head, very low, seemed lower than a plane… close enough to see burning detail, like a volcanic rock glowing orange, with dark rock formation shadows visible.” Moments later, she experienced “a massive boom” that felt more like an impact than a sonic boom. “My house and the earth shook visibly,” she wrote.
In Eildon, resident Terrence Dale spotted the meteor at 7:35 p.m. “It was low on the horizon and had blue and red colours, extremely long in shape. It vanished from sight behind the nearby mountain range,” he posted. Dale said he instantly recognised what it was, having read online about an imminent meteor shower. “I just happened to be outside on a clear night, looking in exactly the right direction.” The sight left him awestruck.
The meteor was also recorded by the Pendergast Hut webcam atop Mt Buller at 7:40 p.m., providing visual confirmation for scientists and skywatchers.
Professor Jonti Horner, an astrophysicist and astronomer at the University of Southern Queensland, later confirmed that the phenomenon was indeed a meteor. “Given its brightness, we classify it as a ‘fireball’ essentially a meteor shining more brightly than the planet Venus,” Horner explained. “Its luminosity and the widely reported sonic boom suggest that some fragments could have survived the journey and reached the ground.”
However, he noted that no meteorites have been recovered so far, which is not unusual. “You pretty much need to be an expert to identify one, and even then, it’s like finding a needle in a haystack,” he said.
Horner added that having footage from different vantage points could allow researchers to triangulate the meteor’s trajectory, calculate its speed and direction, and pinpoint possible impact zones. The Australian Desert Fireball Network operated by Curtin University maintains a network of specialised cameras designed to capture and analyse events like Sunday’s spectacle.
According to Horner, meteors of this magnitude grace Australia’s skies roughly five to ten times a year. For the residents of central Victoria, this was a rare and unforgettable moment a fiery visitor from space that lit up the night and left the earth trembling underfoot.