At 3:40 am I went outside and saw what I believed was a lightning flash. Then another, then another. They seemed too ordered for lightning, and there was no thunder, so I started timing them.
They were exactly 8 seconds apart! Then it changed to 14 seconds apart for about 2 minutes, then 10 seconds apart for the next 10 minutes then stopped altogether!!!!
There was no aircraft around, the air was deadly silent.
It lit up the whole sky from horizon to horizon in every direction in pure white flashes lasting only milliseconds each.

The whole event lasted about 15 minutes.
While writing this, I have just been outside again to check that it has finished and noticed 3 more flashes exactly 50 seconds apart, then a strange light on the thin cloud moved about 1/4 the way across the sky like a fast moving search light, but not lit from the ground. It was lit from above the cloud.
This does not seem to be associated with the thunderstorms we had all day or the ones predicted to come early morning as the flashes had a definite pattern to their time intervals, not random.
Wierd!
Did anyone (silly enough to be up at this time) in Western Victoria also see this?