Earthquake today

Adelaide last night was shaken by its second notable earth tremor this month. One senior seismologist has referred to a "cluster of events" and says there ...

"Australia is moving north at about 7 centimetres every year. "That generated a 20-kilometre long fault scarp in the landscape, but it was in the middle of the desert." "We sit in the middle of the plate and all of those stresses get transferred to the rocks within the plate and we get movements along these fault lines. "In 1954 there was a magnitude-5.4 in the centre of Adelaide so there's certainly potential for larger earthquakes in the area," Dr Bathgate said. "[It's] probably one of the most active parts of the country — this area through Adelaide to the Flinders Ranges, along with the Gippsland area in Victoria and the south-west of Western Australia are probably the three most active parts of the country, seismically." "The movement of the fault is actually rocks moving, so that sudden movement of the rocks generates that [rumbling] noise."