An astonishing 5.5 magnitude earthquake was recorded in central Australia.
Residents in Amata, a remote community in northern South Australia formerly known as Musgrave Park, reported feeling tremors at 3.56am on Easter Sunday.
Geoscience Australia senior seismologist Jonathan Bathgate told the ABC about 30 reports were made about the quake.
‘It woke a number of people up from Yulara and around the region with some light to moderate shaking,’ he said.
‘Some light fixture swinging from the ceiling and some things rattling from shelves and that sort of thing so it was a bit of an early morning wake-up for quite a few people.’
The earthquake was also felt in Yulara, Uluru and Mutitjulu. A 5.5 rating on the Richter scale is strong enough to be felt and can cause moderate damage to buildings.
The quake caught the attention of experts internationally as it was located in an area considered stable, with Shawn Willsy, a geology professor at University of Southern Idaho, calling it ‘rare’ with only two others in the area in the last century.
He noted it was an ‘intraplate’ quake and not on a tectonic plate boundary, with this type of seismic activity usually occurring at shallow depths.
A 5.5 magnitude earthquake was recorded in Amata (marked above), near Uluru, on Sunday morning
The earthquake near Uluru (above) on Sunday was equivalent to the 1989 Newcastle earthquake
The seismic activity recorded on Sunday in central Australia was about the same magnitude to that recorded in the devastating 1989 Newcastle earthquake that killed 13 people and caused $4billion worth of damage.
‘It’s the same size earthquake, it just happens to be in quite a remote part of the country rather than near a populated centre, so there is that potential for it to have quite some significant impacts,’ Mr Bathgate said.
Several aftershocks between 2.8 and 3.6 on the Richter scale were recorded near Amata, about 116km south of Uluru, after 9am.
While the area does not see frequent seismic activity, there was a 5.4 magnitude earthquake recorded at Ernabella in 2012 and a 6.1 magnitude earthquake hit the Petermann Ranges in 2016.
