We Felt The Earth Move Under Our Feet

Moe is about a 25 minute drive up the highway from us.

We had a little bit of excitement in our corner of the world last night. Just before 9 pm we had an earthquake. The boys and I were in the kitchen talking when it happened. Mark was in bed having a lie down (his sleeping patterns are all messed up for some reason). It took us a few seconds to realise what was going on. It started out like a rumble you could hear coming. Then the walls were creaking and the floor was shaking in what felt like a circular motion. It lasted for a good 20-30 seconds.

It's kind of obvious to me that we are not used to earthquakes. We just stood there looking at one another. Not moving just looking. A quick look in the lounge room to see if the animals were okay. Which of course they were. Nothing looked like it had fallen over. Mark went outside to check his shed. Everything was still in order apart from a couple of drawers that had opened.

Of course what did I do just a few seconds after that happened? I jumped on twitter. If you want to find out anything fast check there. I also tried Geoscience Australia's (GA) website but of course that had crashed. No surprise really. Brodz found out from friends overseas that the quake had measured at 5.2 according to the USGC website. Later the GA said it was 5.5 then revised it to 5.3 once they had been able to check all their data properly. Personally I don't care how big or small it was. All I cared about was that it felt different to the last few quakes that we had. It was much stronger and lasted much longer

This shows a more accurate picture of where the epicentre was. I live just to the left of Warragul

As you can see from the header photo the epicentre was just outside of Moe. Moe is roughly 35-40 km from us (around 25 miles). It's no wonder it felt stronger than any other quake I've experienced before. A few of our Church friends live in Moe and around. I chatted with a few of them on Facebook last night. They're okay. Some of the kids were a bit scared. One friend said all of the pictures on the wall had fallen down and their birdcage, which is on wheels, was knocked over but they were okay she just had a couple of frightened young boys. They had even had a few aftershocks. No wonder the kids were still scared.

So far, from what I have heard on the TV and read on the news sites no one was hurt. There wasn't much damage done. Which was good to hear.

Of course I had to play this song :D

How's that for a bit of exciting news. And there I was yesterday wondering what I could possible talk about in my next blog post.I guess I shouldn't have worried about it at all ...