SOUTH-east Queensland residents have been startled by a bright, green ball of streaking light that initially sparked fears of a plane crash.

A police spokeswoman said the suspected meteor was seen travelling east to west in the region from Bribie Island, across the Sunshine and Gold Coasts as far inland as Warwick.



She said a Warwick farmer alerted police about 6.30pm (AEST) of what he thought was a "fire ball" from a plane crashing on his property.

A search of the area found nothing.

Police were then inundated by sightings of a "green ball of light".

Andre Claydon of the Springbrook Observatory near the Gold Coast said he had received scores of sightings of what he thought was a meteor shower from across the region.

He said the meteor shower would have appeared much closer than it actually was.

"As it comes in through our atmosphere we get a magnification effect so it always looks a lot closer but it is probably 60 to 70km inside our atmosphere," he said on ABC Radio.

"I had a number of phone calls specifically from the eastern part of Australia regarding a meteor shower that has come through and broken up into a few pieces."

The Astronomical Association of Queensland's Peter Hall told ABC Radio: "It sounds like a meteor to me.

"Most of them are the size of a grain of sand but this one must have been larger."