Explainer: Victoria's earthquake was stronger than the Newcastle quake

About 9.15am on Wednesday, residents were left gobsmacked when the earth started shaking as tremors from a magnitude 5.9 earthquake registered just south of Mansfield in Victoria travelled 300km to hit the Riverina.

Dr Ben Wilson, an earth scientist with Charles Sturt University, said that while the earthquake recorded on Wednesday did not result in widespread damage, it could have been far worse.

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Dr Wilson said the earthquake was actually stronger than the devastating Newcastle quake of 1989 which was recorded as 5.6.

In fact, it was only thanks to the remote location of Mansfield that we didn't see similar scenes of devastation.

"It's quite possibly the largest ever in Victoria, certainly in the last 100 years," he said.

"Compared to the Newcastle earthquake, it was of a higher magnitude, it just occurred in the middle of nowhere, whereas the Newcastle one was under a city so it had a greater impact."

Australian National University seismologist Dr Meghan Miller said that while the quake is being compared with the handful of memorable earthquakes that have occurred in Australia, they are far more common than many understand.

"It's a fallacy that people think because we're in the middle of a tectonic plate earthquakes can't occur here," she said.

"They certainly do but they're not as large as the ones that occur much more frequently at plate boundaries."

Dr Miller said because of the sparsely populated landscape in Australia, often an earthquake is noticed only by the various seismometers dotted across the country, and no people actually feel the tremors.

"We have earthquakes occurring all the time in Australia, we have about 100 every year that are greater than a magnitude three," she said.

"They do occur but often they occur very far away from where people are living."

Dr Wilson explained that earthquakes occur when the tectonic plates that make up the earth's surface collide or rub against one another and cause stress to run through the plate.

While most happen on the boundaries of two plates in places like New Zealand, Chile or Japan, the same shifts are behind the smaller quakes we experience on the centre of the Australian plate.

"Occasionally pressure builds up to a point where you get a large release of pressure," he said.

"In Australia that happens very rarely but it happened yesterday."

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