Residents of the New South Wales city of Goulburn and its surrounding areas may have felt some shaking after a 3.9 magnitude quake rattled the region on the morning of May 23.
Geoscience Australia says the incident happened at 6.41 a.m. near Taralga, with shaking felt as far away as Sydney to Canberra.
The quake’s epicentre was recorded near Crookwell, north of Goulburn, with a depth of one kilometre.
One resident, commenting on the Seismology Research Centre’s Facebook page, described the dramatic sensation at Cowra.
“House certainly was moving under us, it felt like we were rolling off a wave,” local Christian Storey said.
Others said it woke them from their sleep, and described the associated sounds as “like someone knocking on windows.”
Jackie Blowers, who lives near the centre of the quake at Crookwell, said she thought something had hit their house.
“We heard a bang, windows started rattling and then the house started shaking, there was rumbling,” she said.
Rhonda Long described it as like a freight train going through her home.
“Shaking windows and coat hangers in the cupboard,” she said.
“The crack was unbelievable.”
The Goulburn region sits over a belt of faults between New South Wales and Victoria.
Geoscience Australia Senior Seismologist Hadi Ghasemi discussed the event in a video forwarded to the media.
“Looking at the history of the region, we haven’t had many earthquakes right next to this event, but looking a bit further, like a 100km radius from the epicentre... in the past 20 years we have registered more than 250 earthquakes,” he said.
Dr. Ghasemi said about 20 of them were magnitude 3 or more.
“In other words, there have been many earthquakes that have gone unfelt by the public because of their size,” he said.
Aftershocks were possible, Mr. Ghasemi said, but if they happened, they would be expected to be smaller than the main quake.
So far, no aftershocks have been felt, and there have been no damage reports filed.
Mr. Ghasemi said more than 400 “felt reports” from in and around the epicentre had been lodged online.
