A small earthquake near the town of Elmore, about 150 kilometers north of Melbourne, struck early Tuesday morning.
According to Geoscience Australia, the magnitude 3.5 quake struck at 6.41am.
In September 2021, Victoria recorded a significant magnitude 5.9 earthquake, the largest in the state’s history. The earthquake, which originated near Mansfield, caused damage to buildings in Melbourne and was felt as far away as Canberra, Sydney and Adelaide.
There have been more than a dozen earthquakes of magnitude greater than three in the area since the 2021 event.
Aftershocks that occurred years or decades after the first earthquakes were common, Prof. Cummins said, and more could follow, seismologist Phil Cummins explained.
“It’s not unusual for large aftershocks to have their own aftershocks,” Prof Cummins said.
Although Australia did not have an active tectonic plate boundary like New Guinea or New Zealand, stress from other boundaries slowly built up into the interior of the plate, eventually causing faults to fail.
“They simply fail much less often than near tectonic plate boundaries, where strain rates are much greater,” he said.
A small earthquake near the town of Elmore, about 150 kilometers north of Melbourne, struck early Tuesday morning.
The largest earthquake ever to hit Australia was a magnitude 6.6 earthquake that struck Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory in January 1988.
An average of 100 earthquakes of magnitude 3 or more are recorded in Australia every year.
About every 100 years, an earthquake of magnitude greater than 7 occurs somewhere in Australia.
“In active areas such as Japan, the Philippines or California, magnitude 7 earthquakes occur every few years,” the Seismology Research Center explains.
‘Activity at these places is confined to a much smaller area than that of Australia, so a typical site could be within 50 km of a magnitude 7 event every 100 years.
‘Earthquakes of magnitude 8 and greater are called major earthquakes and normally only occur at plate boundaries
‘It’s unlikely this will ever happen in Australia. Earthquakes of magnitude 9 and larger will rupture fault lines over hundreds of kilometers, so they usually only occur in subduction zones such as along the west coast of South America or the southern coast of Alaska.’