Earthquake shakes up South Australia

ABC News

Residents on South Australia's Yorke and Eyre Peninsulas have reported an earthquake which could measure as high as 5 on the Richter scale.

The Department of Primary Industries and Resources says it believes the epicentre is near Cleve and the tremor was between 4.5 and 5 on the Richter scale, which puts it higher than April's quake in the Adelaide Hills, which recorded 3.8.

Reports have come in from towns including Cleve, Cowell, Kimba, Tumby Bay and Wallaroo, but so far there have been no reports of damage.

Seismologist David Love says authorities are still investigating how deep the quake was.

"There have been some aftershocks and I would expect that some of them would have been felt," he said.

"And it's likely that there'll be some other ones. I don't expect that they'll be particularly large and quite possibly only people close to Cleve will feel the smaller ones."

Mr Love says this size earthquake is above the yearly average.

"Normally we'd only expect in a year to have one earthquake of around about magnitude four and when we're talking about earthquakes of magnitude five, I'd only expect one of them about say every seven years."

Tony Armour from Wallaroo says the quake sounded like an explosion.

"I'd just got out of bed, I'd just got the paper, I was sitting on the toilet and I think I was on page two," he said.

"All of a sudden the whole toilet shook and it frightened the you know what out of me."

Peter Kraack from Moonta, 160 kilometres north-west of Adelaide, says he was reading the paper when he felt the earth move.

"At 7:18 [am] a rumble in the distance I thought was a semi-trailer because we live close to a busy road, gradually got more intense, lasted at least 20 seconds, frightened my wife, worried me a bit and then faded into the distance," he said.