G’day to the quake zone

by Lauredhel on March 6, 2009

There’s just been an earthquake in Melbourne. Twitter has exploded; Google News is yet silent. Nothing on USGS yet; and the Aussie Seismology Research Centre is inaccessible. (Broken, or quake-dotted?)

I hope our Melburnian Hoydens are all ok.

I blame Bernard Salt, who wrote several weeks ago:

We have never thought of ourselves as being awkwardly placed with regard to the fury of mother nature.

Safely tucked away at the head of Port Phillip Bay, we seem to be immune from the effects of cyclone, earthquake and tsunami.

But it would be wrong to think of Melbourne as being rarely exposed to natural disaster.

Next up: rain of frogs. Hold your first-borns tight.

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This article was written by lauredhel

Lauredhel is a forty-something woman with a disability. She lives in her Western Australian family home where books, Lego, and soapmaking gear constantly compete for space. She blogs about feminism, reproductive justice, freedom from violence, the use and misuse of language, medical science, being disabled, her vegetable garden, and whatever else pops into her head. Lauredhel also blogs at FWD/Forward (feminists with disabilities), scribbles at her personal dreamwidth journal Selective and Arbitrary, and co-moderates Hollaback Australia. She joined Hoyden About Town in 2007.

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{ 15 comments }

1 Lauredhel March 6, 2009 at 9:31 pm: Update: USGS is now reporting this as Richter 4.7, centred south east of Melbourne.

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2 another outspoken female March 6, 2009 at 10:09 pm: Two witches in Carlton talking about sex with young men…the earth moved :)

another outspoken female’s last blog post..bits. bobs and budgeting for the barren
3 SunlessNick March 6, 2009 at 10:25 pm: Good wishes to the Melbourne folk.
4 Deborah March 6, 2009 at 11:45 pm: 4.7? Meh. Try living in Wellington – 4.7 is a mere raised eyebrow.

Though I freely grant that NZ houses and buildings are designed with earthquakes in mind, and Australian ones are not, so I think that I would be quite alarmed by a 4.7 over here in Australia…
5 whoozqueen March 7, 2009 at 12:22 am: Yup, we definitely felt it. Twas like a snake zipping under the floorboards. My couch (that I was sitting on) moved and all the plates rattled. Haven’t experienced one since I was a kid, I think.
6 Deus Ex Macintosh March 7, 2009 at 2:45 am: Having grown up in Qld I can confidently vouch for the fact that the rain of (cane) toads began a few decades back and is still ongoing…

Deus Ex Macintosh’s last blog post..Excess baggage
7 EKSwitaj March 7, 2009 at 7:42 am: After living in Japan for two years, I don’t even get out of bed for anything under a 6.5
8 Helen March 7, 2009 at 10:34 am: :-D

Cut and pasted from the thread at LP, cos I’m a lazy cow: I was sitting around after dinner at a friend’s place and a freight train went past astonishingly fast and close and shook the house. Then I thought “wait a minute, they’re nowhere near the train line here.” This was in Newport (which does have a train track but nowhere near my friend’s house.)

According to another commenter there there was a larger one in 2007, but maybe it occurred in the wee hours where not many people were awake.
9 another outspoken female March 7, 2009 at 10:34 am: Deborah as an expat-Wellingtonian I have to admit I found the hooplah about it very amusing. But then I realised – most of my fellow citizens here have never felt an earthquake before. A very gentle little shake, at that. It was a novelty to experience an earthquake without seriously worrying “is this the big one?”. Now that was nice indeed :)

another outspoken female’s last blog post..bits. bobs and budgeting for the barren
10 geekanachronism March 7, 2009 at 1:53 pm: It was weird – it felt like the time a car hit my house, but without noise. My partner immediately said it felt like what he imagined an earthquake would feel like. Everything just wobbled (we’re in Oakleigh South) but there was no noise.

And of course our NZ friend he was speaking to at the time just told us to stop whining, 4.7 is nothing.
11 Bene March 7, 2009 at 2:42 pm: Heard about this via Twitter–best wishes, everyone. What weird stuff.
12 Legal Eagle March 7, 2009 at 6:02 pm: I slept through the last earthquake we had in Melb, so I’m quite excited to experience this one. Initially, I thought a big truck had passed down our little street or there had been a very high gust of wind. It shook all the glasses in the cupboard. We’re not that far from the epicentre (eastern Melb). Then I just put it from my mind and went to bed – it didn’t even occur to me that it might have been an earthquake.

I only found out it was an earthquake until I went to get sushi for lunch, and my Japanese sushi friends commented that it was like living in Japan again…
13 Amanda March 7, 2009 at 8:45 pm: Lived through Newcastle quake 89, knocked me over as I was getting out of the shower. House had cracks for years afterwards. Hard to believe it was 20 years ago.
14 Dave March 7, 2009 at 11:34 pm: It was actually a bit of fun. I was standing in my kitchen when my microwave decided to dance across the bench.

Not every day one sees a dancing microwave!

I think this should become a new sport. Can you imagine the gambling opportunities?

Instead of placing waders on the progress of two flies climbing up the wall or on competing athletic cockroaches, we can gamble on the which shall be the first microwave to cross the finish line.
15 Helen March 8, 2009 at 10:36 am: I think you might mean wagers Dave, because blowfly waders would be incredibly fiddly to put on.

:-D