A remote community in the APY Lands have woken up to rattling shelves and swinging lights caused by a magnitude-5.5 earthquake, Geoscience Australia says.
The shake was recorded at 3:56am on Sunday at Amata, formerly Musgrave Park, near the border of South Australia and the Northern Territory.Â
Geoscience Australia senior seismologist Jonathan Bathgate said the agency received about 30 reports from people who felt the quake.
“It woke a number of people up from Yulara and around the region with some light to moderate shaking,” he told 891 ABC Adelaide.
“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.”
Several people on social media reported being woken up by the quake in Yulara, Uluru and Mutitjulu.
A magnitude-5.5 earthquake and several aftershocks were recorded in the Amata area. (Supplied: Geoscience Australia)
He said the magnitude was equivalent to the devastating 1989 Newcastle earthquake that killed and injured dozens, and created a $4 billion damage bill.
“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,” he said.
Mr Bathgate said the remote region experienced several aftershocks after 9am, between 2.8 and 3.6 on the Richter scale, but not many people would have felt them unless they were near the epicentre.
“Generally, with an aftershock sequence they become less frequent and smaller as time progresses, but it doesn’t rule out another larger earthquake in amongst that sequence as well, so it’s difficult to predict,” he said.
He says the area has a seismic history, and “is capable of some significant-sized earthquakes”.
A magnitude-5.4 shock at Ernabella (Pukatja) was recorded in 2012, which at the time was the largest inland earthquake in 15 years.
“And then in 2016, a magnitude-6.1 out in the Petermann Ranges, so that one was quite a significant earthquake with a 20-kilometre-long fault scarp left in the landscape after that one,” Mr Bathgate said.