Bowen earthquake:
Magnitiude-5.8 tremor rocks central and north Queensland; no tsunami threat
Updated about an hour ago
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Video: Footage shows the moment Mackay workers realise there's an earthquake (ABC News)
Map: Townsville 4810
An earthquake has shaken areas of central and north Queensland but there have been
no reports of damage.
Geoscience Australia said the magnitude-5.8 earthquake struck off the coast of Bowen about 2:30pm.
Senior seismologist Jonathan Bathgate said the quake posed no tsunami threat, but a large portion of the Queensland coast felt some shaking.
"We know it's been felt all the way from the Sunshine Coast up to north of Townsville," he said.
"At this stage we've had almost 1,000 reports come in to our earthquake alert centre here in Canberra of people having felt the earthquake."
By 5:00pm, there had been six aftershocks recorded in the same area as the initial quake, the highest of them magnitude-4.
Queensland Police have not had any reports of major damage, however minor cracking has occurred at some properties.
'The whole place is shaking'
Townsville resident John Towning said he was watching ABC News 24 when his chair started to shake.
"I thought, 'there's no train around, no plane around' then I got up and had a look and I thought, 'geez, the whole bloody place is shaking'," he said.
"I sat down again and it was like the bloody chair was vibrating.
"When you looked around at everything on the wall you could see it all shaking."
Mr Towning said one of his neighbours fled her house because she believed it was not safe.
"I'd say it lasted a good six or seven seconds," he said. "It was more funny than scary. You don't normally get those things here.
"You watch the clock shaking across the wall a bit, everything on top of the fridge is shaking."
'A few things came off the shelves'
ABC journalist Brigid Glanville is holidaying with her family on Hamilton Island in the Whitsundays and also felt the quake.
"It certainly shook everyone up. I went into the general store and a few things came off the shelves and everyone is talking about it," she said.
Queensland has experienced several quakes in past two years
Mr Bathgate said earthquakes had been particularly active in Queensland over the past two years.
A magnitude-4.4 quake was detected about 100 kilometres off the coast north-east of Bundaberg early last Sunday morning.
He said
there had been three earthquakes of magnitude-5 just off the coast of Fraser Island late last year and also near Eidsvold.
"The largest earthquake that has been experienced in Queensland is actually a magnitude-6 that occurred off the coast of Gladstone in 1918, so that's not too far away from this one," Mr Bathgate said.
"Australia generally gets earthquakes as a result of the plate that we're on, moving north at about 7 centimetres every year.
"That stress builds up within the plate and gets released along lines of weakness like we've seen today."
