'I thought a train pulled up outside my house': Earthquake shakes region

The magnitude 3.9 quake hit at 6.41am and was felt in Crookwell, Mount Rae, Goulburn, the Central West and as far afield as Jervis Bay, Wollongong and Coolamon.

Geoscience Australia recorded the 10km deep earthquake's centre around Mount Rae, some 30km north of Goulburn. A total 500 people lodged 'felt reports' with the organisation.

Middle Arm property owner and Daily Telegraph cartoonist, Warren Brown, said there was "almighty bang" at 6.40am.

"We're under a slight flight path and I thought it was a plane coming down....The house shook and it felt like something hit the house," he said.

"Not in my wildest dreams did I think it was an earthquake. We've never experienced one before."

He and others who felt the quake didn't report any damage.

Mr Brown lives some 5km "as the crow flies" from Mount Rae.

At Myrtleville, near Taralga, grazier Danny Cummins* said there was a slight tremor in the house.

"The noise is what got us. There was a real explosion and I thought a gas bottle had exploded in the shed or a bomb had gone off," he said.

"I walked around for a good 10 minutes expecting to see some damage but there didn't appear to be any. It was just crazy!"

In Taralga itself, Noelene Cosgrove reported a "rumble like a big truck."

"Then there was a boom. We went outside thinking something had hit somewhere and realised it was an earthquake. It was a 30 second moment," she said.

Over at Crookwell, Paul Culhane said his house, 10km west of the town, "well and truly shook."

"My daughter had just started the car outside my window and I thought she'd crashed into the house," he said.

"It really shook the structure of the house...We get the odd tremor but I've never experienced anything like this."

Fortunately, there was no visible damage.

In Goulburn, the impact was varied. Eastgrove resident, Darrell Weekes, thought someone had "parked a train next to his house."

"There was a bit of a rattle and a shake and then it was gone before I was conscious," he said.

But it was nothing compared to an earthquake he experienced at Eastgrove in the late 1970s/early 1980s which "twisted his house on its foundations."

Closer to the CBD, Daphne Penalver was first alerted by dogs barking next door and then heard the "bang." She didn't experience any damage.

At Run-O-Waters, Anne Oliver said there was "a low, deep rumbling sound, very noisy."

"It lasted for one or two seconds, and there was a shudder towards the front of the house," she told The Canberra Times.

Senior seismologist at Geoscience Australia, Dr Hadi Ghasemi, said there hadn't been many earthquakes in close proximity to Thursday's.

However, there had been 250 quakes within a 100km of the epicentre within the last 20 years. Twenty of these were magnitude three or larger.

Dr Ghasemi didn't expect major damage but said aftershocks were a possibility.

Geophysicist at the University of NSW, Professor Stuart Clark said the quake was reasonably large for Australia but minor in a broader sense.

He told The Post that the "west dipping" Mulwaree thrust fault ran through the Goulburn area and connected various terrains.

Different geological blocks developed on either side of the fault, caused by Australia moving east and northward, the latter at a rate of 7cm each year.

"It has slipped a lot in the past and is a broken region of geology so if there are stresses, they can release across it," Professor Clark said.

"That fault would have been very active millions of years ago and large movements would have occurred. It is now fairly dormant, a bit like a volcano. It is still able to move so if there are any stresses built up (like the continent moving northward) it can reactivate faults."

Professor Clark said there had been 36 magnitude three to five earthquakes east of Canberra, across several hundred square kilometres, within the past four years. The largest of these was a magnitude 3.9 quake at Burradoo.

In this respect, the Goulburn district tremor rated "in the top ten."