Witness Terry Thelwell told ABC Radio Sydney he and his wife were only about two-metres away from where the car landed.

“My wife and I were sitting having lunch on a chair down below on the beach and heard this almighty roar and looked to our left and heard screaming,” he said.

“The car … came hurtling across the grass on the promenade at Balmoral, I don’t know how she didn’t hit anybody,”

“It hit the wall at such speed and the car somersaulted over the wall, smashed the wall completely, it’s a hundred-year-old wall, somersaulted on the beach and landed basically two-metres from us.”