'The whole house shook': Earthquake rattles the ground west of Newcastle [in Muswellbrook] [FULL TEXT IN POST]

Geoscience Australia is reporting magnitude of 5, with the epicentre near Muswellbrook: https://earthquakes.ga.gov.au/event/ga2024qpnryi

ORIGINAL ARTICLE, PUBLISHED 12:30pm

UPDATED ARTICLE, PUBLISHED 1:07pm

'The whole house shook': Earthquake rattles the ground west of Newcastle

📷 The red mark represents the earthquake epicentre, while the blue marks indicate where tremors were felt. Picture by Geoscience Australia

AN EARTHQUAKE has rocked the Hunter Region on Friday afternoon, leaving hundreds of residents shaken and thousands without power.

Reports flooded in of the quake being felt across the region - and as far and Tamworth, Mudgee and the Central Coast - at about midday on August 23.

Geoscience Australia confirmed a magnitude 5.0 earthquake struck Denman at 12.01pm on Friday, at a depth of 10 kilometres, causing widespread tremors.

Amanda Sharp lives two minutes from the centre of town, she said she heard the earthquake coming before she felt it.

"It actually sounded like a huge wind tunnel coming up, it sounded like massive wind but there was no wind, and then the whole entire house just started shaking," she said.

"We have things on the top of our kitchen and they all fell off, we had glasses on top of our kitchen shelf and they've fallen down."

Ms Sharp said the "significant" rattle was felt throughout the town and all the way to Muswellbrook through to Mudgee.

"I've still got horses that are galloping around my property that are still stirred up and quite agitated from it," she said.

"My dog is still underneath the bed, we can't get her out."

Ms Sharp moved to the area in 2020 and said she thinks there has been a small tremor in the area before but "nothing like this".

"We ran outside straight away to check what was happening," she said.

More than 2500 people are without power in the Muswellbrook area, according to Ausgrid.

"Severe weather conditions" has been listed as the cause of the outage, and crews were still working to restore power at about 1pm.

Muswellbrook's Eatons Hotel licensee, Khalifa Askar, said it was "a little bit scary there for a moment".

"It was shaking for about 10 to 15 seconds... a bunch of stuff fell off my fridge," Mr Askar said.

Layla Moss was working at Denman's Royal Hotel when she felt the tremor.

"It shook everything inside," she said.

"All our wine glasses are hanging up over the bar and they shook a lot, but there was no damage, nothing falling over."

Over at the Denman Hotel, Jack Buckley said the only causality was a runaway wine bottle.

"We did feel it, it was just a bit of shake and we had a few bottles rolling around on the shelf," he said.

One Hamilton resident reported feeling their whole house shake when the quake hit.

"It felt like there was something under the house," they said.

"I was very confused."

Residents said they felt the ground or buildings shake at locations as widespread as Newcastle West, Tenambit, Cardiff, Hamilton, Singleton, Muswellbrook, Salamander Bay, Edgeworth and at the Gresford showgrounds.

A resident in Salamander Bay reported their desk moving across the floor, while others in locations like Islington said they felt their doors and windows rattle.

People have swarmed to social media to share their experiences of feeling the earthquake.

On average, 100 earthquakes of magnitude three or more are recorded in Australia each year.

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This story is developing

Our journalists are working to verify further information