I feel the earth move…

The Earth is, of course, always moving, but sometimes bits of it move relative to the rest of it. That just happened right here in inner suburban Melbourne – an earth tremor, I’m guessing nor more than 1 or 2 on the Richter scale, which lasted for less than half a minute. Reports via web 2.0 – Twitter, Facebook status, that sort of thing – indicate it hit a reasonably wide area centred on the inner northern suburbs.

It’s not the first time Melbourne has felt such a thing; a tremor hit the eastern suburbs in October 2006, much further out of the city. I was hoping to read up on it and tell you all about the plate tectonics of Victoria, but unfortunately the Geoscience Australia web site isn’t responding (let’s hope it’s just because they’re busy analysing the new data!). I’ll update with more info when I can.

UPDATE: Well, my estimate was way off: turns out the quake was rated 4.6 (much lower and we’d have hardly noticed it), we no longer use the “Richter scale” (its a Magnitude Moment), and this one occured 8 kilometres down near Korumburra. No, I didn’t know where that is either; turns out it’s in South Gippsland, near the Strzelecki Ranges. You can find the lattitude and longitude on the Geoscience Australia web site, in the list of recent earthquakes (we have a lot of them!). With thanks to the ever-reliable and always interesting Clem Bastow, who shared knowledge via Twitter. Hard to imagine not knowing more about this sort of thing instantly via the Internet, these days!

17 comments

  1. Ed says:

    I wonder how many people were doing it at the time of the quake? And how many felt the earth move twice that night?

    Our cats totally freaked out. By their reactions they thought it was a car in the driveway. Been a bit skittish since.

    Hope you are good. Have to catch up for coffee sometime. We have left the burg behind and are in W. Brunswick now. Walk distance to near your joint on Sydney rd.

  2. Ben says:

    Thanks all for your thoughts – you’re right John, I was way off with my idea of what magnitude meant! Anything under 4 often goes un-noticed as an earthquake, whereas ours was certainly not a passing train! It’s widespread, yet oddly specific – my girlfriend lives in Essendon and her family didn’t notice anything, and I hear people in St. Kilda missed it too.

  3. John says:

    Sorry to say but unless an earthquake is over 3 on the richter scale we cannot feel it… I felt it out in the outer south eastern suburbs, it shook my house quite violently and caused the dishes on my kitchen sink to rattle.

  4. Claire says:

    just thought id let you know, my parents felt the tremour an they live in castlemaine – about 120kms north of mel,i felt in in the eastern suburbs – box hill and my bf is in greensbourgh and he felt it there too. It wasnt just the inner suburbs of melb.

  5. Lian Peet says:

    I am glad I am not going nuts! I was watching a spooky part in a movie and I was pretty freaked out by the tremor as it was quite a long coming rumble with everything rattling and the electricity flickering. It hit here (Belgrave area) at about 8:55, which is quite a long time after you felt it.
    Cheers,
    Lian.

  6. qwerty says:

    i thought my chair was about to fall apart or something, i was playing a game on the internet with other aussies so i typed OMFG MY CHAIR JUST SHOOK! and some other guy said the same thing happened to him who was also in melbourne. i thought it was pretty exciting tbh.

  7. Brad says:

    Hey, We felt the same thing in Aspendale Gardens, around the same time, sitting at the diner table and wondered what was going on.

  8. Janet says:

    Yes – we felt the earth move in Port Melbourne. It sounded like a train running across the roof. He said he felt the outside wall shake. I saw the sliding screen doors slide on their own across the double doors.

  9. Narelle Keen says:

    Yes, we felt it and my parents are in venus Bay and they felt it, too – quite widespread.

  10. Alison says:

    I’m in Gembrook – we felt it here quite strongly for about 20 to 30 seconds – started with a loud bang (I thought a tree had hit the garage) – I sure felt the floor move and could see the walls actually moving – yikes – 4 evacuations due to fires nearby and now this LOL

  11. chantelle says:

    we just felt it in Mentone. At least now I know I hadn’t just had too much
    vino with dinner.

  12. Dianne says:

    The tremor hit us in Camberwell around 9pm… we could here a loud rumble and everything started to vibrate.. scary lasted about 8sec……….

  13. Quiet1 says:

    I felt it too – distinct side-to-side termor, but didn;t cause waves in my fishtanks unlike the last “big” one (2008?)

  14. Samantha Dunn says:

    Earth Tremor in Selby too in the Dandenong Ranges, far out in Melbourne’s Outer East.

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