UPDATE 3.10pm: By complete chance, Tom Bailey tilted his camera towards Sacred Heart Cathedral at exactly the moment lightning bolt struck.
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“It was good timing, really. I saw the storm was putting on a good lightning show. I had the camera pointing in the right place at the right time,” he said.
Mr Bailey had been filming Sunday’s electrical storms near his home, posting short videos to Instagram.
He had heard thunder behind him and was turning as he filmed the moment lightning connected with the cathedral’s topmost spire.
Even then, because he was not intentionally pointing his phone at the cathedral he did not know whether he had captured the electrifying moment until he got back home.
If he had began shooting his vision moments earlier, Mr Bailey said his camera would have missed the strike completely.
Mr Bailey added a one second pause to the frame the lightning struck, but said other than that the vision was untouched.
EARLIER: Striking vision of a lightning strike during Mass at Sacred Heart Cathedral has emerged online.
Tom Bailey captured the moment lightning struck the topmost spire of Sacred Heart Cathedral in Bendigo on Sunday evening.
He shared it with the Catholic Diocese of Sandhurst, which posted it online.
Father Tony Shallue had just began his 6pm homily for a Mass as the lightning bolt struck.
“I started (the Mass) and there were big thunder rolls. I continued on all of a sudden there was this loud crack. People were very frightened,” he said.
“People keep asking me what I was talking about. I dare not say.”
None of the 200 parishioners were injured during the incident, though an amplifier short-circuited and the cathedral bells stopped working.
Lightning conductors built into the cathedral took the current harmlessly down to the ground.
Father Shallue said it was the first time in his years that the cathedral had been hit, though he was sure it would have been in the past.
The cathedral sits near the top of a hill in Bendigo’s CBD and the top-most spire towers above the city.