Earthquake strikes Victoria as thousands of homes are wrecked by devastating floods

A 3.4 magnitude earthquake has been recorded in Mansfield, in Victoria’s northeast.

GeoScience Australia reported the quake near the small town in the foothills of the Victorian Alps just after 9am on Wednesday.

The earthquake was at a depth of five kilometres with GeoScience Australia receiving 77 reports from residents who said they felt the tremors so far.

Senior seismologist Professor Phil Cummins said residents in Melbourne could feel the quake despite being more than 220km away. 

‘It was felt as far away as Melbourne with residents reporting light shaking… (but) there has been no reports of damage,’ he told the Herald Sun. 

Prof Cummins said there has been about 40 earthquakes within 100km of Mansfield since the start of the 20th century – with the last striking on September 22, 2021.  

GeoScience Australia reported the quake near the small town in the foothills of the Victorian Alps just after 9am on Wednesday (pictured, the red dot indicates the location of the quake)

Mansfield residents reported hearing a loud ‘boom’ that sounded like an explosion and feeling the ground shake as the quake reverberated beneath them.

‘We were stunned’, one local Peter told 3AW’s Neil Mitchell. 

Director of the Australian Seismological Centre, Kevin McCue, told the radio host the quake was too small to do any damage but had been felt from 20km to 25km away. 

In September 2021, Mansfield was struck by a 5.9 magnitude earthquake which shifted houses, knocked paintings off walls and sent books toppling from shelves. 

The quake was recorded at a depth of 10km at 9.15am with five aftershocks ranging from 2.4 to 4.1 magnitude within an hour and a sixth at 1.18pm. 

A woman was riding horses with two others at Merrijig, about 20km west of Mansfield, when the quake struck.

‘It sounded like a huge plane going over the top of us then the power lines overhead just started shaking like crazy,’ she wrote on a local Facebook group at the time. 

Another said the earthquake ‘sounded like a freight train’ in Boorolite, about 30km south-east of Mansfield – which is known as a town popular with tourists. 

The epicentre of the quake – which is the the largest onshore earthquake ever recorded in Victoria – was in Woods Point, an hour-and-a-half south of Mansfield.

More to come.