‘A snap, then a rumble’: Earthquake rocks Mornington Peninsula

Hundreds of people were shaken awake by a magnitude 3.2 earthquake in the Mornington Peninsula, which was described as sounding like a distant explosion and gunshot.

The earthquake struck at 4.39am on Thursday at Main Ridge, near Red Hill, at a depth of 10 kilometres.

The quake prompted more than 500 people to make reports to Geoscience Australia, including from as far away as Geelong.

Main Ridge resident John Sanguinetti said it sounded like a gunshot. “Then a few seconds later, the house shook for a few moments,” he said. “The crockery rattled.”

A Rye resident who felt the tremor told radio station 3AW it lasted about five to 10 seconds. “I was just dozing away, it sounded like a snap and then a rumble,” he said.

Emerald local Trevor Budge said he felt the earth tremble from his Dandenong Ranges home.

“Having felt tremors before, I immediately thought that was a tremor, very low-level shake,” he said.

Geoscience seismographs detected the tremor at stations spanning from Rosebud on the peninsula to Hallett in eastern South Australia, Cobar in outback NSW and the Tasmanian capital of Hobart.

Geoscience Australia senior seismologist Dr Jonathan Griffin said many people reported the quake as sounding like thunder or “a truck rolling”.

“Which is common for some of these smaller, shallower quakes … as these seismic waves reach the surface, they get converted into sound waves,” said Griffin.

“An earthquake of this magnitude, it’s not particularly large, but it’s enough to give you a good shake and potentially wake you up.”

Seismology Research Centre chief scientist Adam Pascale said earthquakes of this strength were not known to cause damage.

“Usually magnitude 3 is going to be felt quite widely – over tens of kilometres – but we usually don’t see damage until we get to about magnitude 4 and above,” he said.

Pascale said there was a fault line running along the Mornington Peninsula that made earthquakes more common in the area.

“Activity in that area is not unheard of but certainly not as much as you might see in Gippsland or through the Great Dividing Range,” he said.

“I think the most significant one was in 1971 off Flinders … but this is the largest for a number of years [since] I think in the late 90s.”

Seismic activity has spiked in Victoria since the magnitude 5.9 tremor in September 2021 damaged buildings in Melbourne and was felt across south-eastern Australia.

Aftershocks from that tremor included a 3.8 magnitude quake near Sunbury in May 2023 – the largest recorded within metropolitan Melbourne for 120 years. In June 2023, more than 10,000 people reported feeling a magnitude 4.6 quake with an epicentre near Mount Baw Baw.

Experts have previously told The Age these tremors were part of normal seismic activity in the aftermath of the September 2021 earthquake.

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