Amazing footage has been captured of the moment lightning strikes a tree just metres away from a group of friends, in Maclean on the northern New South Wales coast.
The video shows one of the friends who runs shirtlessly over the frame, just under the shower, while his comrades are fooling him. A second later the lightning suddenly smashes a large eucalyptus tree behind the man in a flash of white light, followed by an orange fireball.
The group then looks closer and lays a huge crack in the middle of the trunk of the tree, stretching from where the lightning falls to the ground.
