{"id":780183,"date":"2026-07-05T08:10:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T08:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/780183\/"},"modified":"2026-07-05T08:10:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T08:10:13","slug":"magnitude-3-8-earthquake-rocks-coastal-community-along-victorias-great-ocean-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/780183\/","title":{"rendered":"Magnitude-3.8 earthquake rocks coastal community along Victoria’s Great Ocean Road"},"content":{"rendered":"

Victorians along the state’s south-west coastline have been rocked by a magnitude-3.8 earthquake.<\/p>\n

The earthquake struck about 1:40pm near the Great Ocean Road between Apollo Bay and Port Campbell.<\/p>\n

According to Geoscience Australia, the quake occurred at a depth of 10 kilometres.<\/p>\n

More than 60 felt reports were logged with Geoscience Australia, with the quake being felt near Ballarat, Geelong and Melbourne.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The earthquake was felt by some near Ballarat and Melbourne. (Supplied: Geoscience Australia)<\/p>\n

Millions of people visit the Great Ocean Road each year, with more than 2 million visiting the Twelve Apostles<\/a>, just over 20 minutes’ drive north-west of the earthquake epicentre.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dozens of residents posted on social media saying they had felt the quake in nearby Apollo Bay.<\/p>\n

Helena Hunt, who lives in Ferguson, about 60 kilometres east of Port Campbell in the Otways, said everything in her house “violently shook” for a few seconds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I just thought, ‘What the hell was that?” Ms Hunt said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“This is only the second time in my whole life that I’ve experienced an earthquake.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Geoscience Australia seismologist Michelle Salmon said earthquakes happen in Australia more than people think.<\/p>\n

“They generally tend to be smaller than some other countries like New Zealand or Japan,” Ms Salmon said.<\/p>\n

“This particular area [in Victoria] there aren’t that many \u2026 but there’s been a few up in the Otways region.”<\/p>\n

Ms Salmon said Australia is not on a tectonic plate boundary, but there was still a lot of stress in the crust of the earth.<\/p>\n

“If those things change, then we can see earthquakes,” she said.<\/p>\n

“There could be a stress that’s been there for a long time and it’s just sitting there; something small can happen, and the earthquake will pop off.”<\/p>\n

Ms Salmon said the largest earthquake Australia has seen was a 6.6 magnitude in Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory in the 1980s.<\/p>\n

“It’s quite significant,” she said.<\/p>\n

“There was a large gas pipeline that was badly damaged at the time \u2026 luckily in that area there’s not a large amount of infrastructure.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Victorians along the state’s south-west coastline have been rocked by a magnitude-3.8 earthquake. The earthquake struck about 1:40pm…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":780184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[262293,9989,171321,46722,43,359533,44,218497,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-780183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-apollo-bay","tag-earthquake","tag-geoscience","tag-great-ocean-road","tag-headlines","tag-magnitude","tag-news","tag-port-campbell","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=780183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/780184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}