Largest Earthquake In 50 Years Hits Queensland: Here’s What Happened

Queensland Largest Quake In 50 Years: 16/08/2025

A rare tremor jolts Queensland: In an extremely uncommon event for Australia’s Sunshine State, a magnitude 5.6 earthquake struck inland Queensland on the morning of August 16, 2025. Centred near the rural town of Kilkivan – about 80 km west of Noosa and 250 km north of Brisbane – the quake hit at 9:49 am local time and was shallow, about 10 km deep. This was the largest on-shore earthquake recorded in Queensland in half a century, catching residents by surprise in a region that seldom experiences noticeable quakes. Buildings trembled for several seconds, sending people scurrying outside in alarm, but fortunately the event caused only minor structural damage like cracked walls and fallen bricks, and there were no reports of serious injuries. Power outages affected around 11,000 homes as a safety precaution, though electricity was restored within hours. For a state known as Australia’s quietest seismic corner, this jolt was both unprecedented in recent memory and a dramatic reminder that even “stable” ground can shake.

Tremors felt far and wide: Though damage was minimal, the psychological shock was significant. Tremors rippled hundreds of kilometres from the epicentre. Geoscience Australia received more than 12,000 public “felt reports” within hours, with residents reporting shaking from as far north as Cairns down to Wollongong in New South Wales. People in high-rises in Brisbane’s CBD felt their buildings sway, and reports came in from the Gold Coast, Bundaberg, and even northern New South Wales of desks and lamps rattling. “I thought a huge truck had hit the building until I realized everything was moving,” one Sunshine Coast resident said. Another witness near the epicentre described a low rumbling sound followed by a jolt: “The house was absolutely shaking and jolting,” she told local news, noting it lasted around 5–10 seconds and left her heart pounding. Such experiences were especially startling in Queensland, where strong earthquakes are so rare that many people didn’t immediately recognize what was happening. It’s no wonder Queensland’s Premier remarked, “I don’t think anybody expected to wake up to that today in Queensland,” capturing the general disbelief that a sizeable quake had struck the region.

Largest quake in decades: Seismologists confirmed this was the most significant Queensland quake in at least 50 years. The only stronger Queensland tremor in recent times was an offshore magnitude 5.8 near Bowen in 2016 – but that one struck under the sea, not on land. In terms of onshore earthquakes, you’d have to go back decades to find anything comparable in the state. (Historically, Queensland’s biggest quakes reached around magnitude 6.0 in 1918 and 1935, but those occurred almost a century ago.) Geoscience Australia’s senior seismologist, Michelle Salmon, noted that this 2025 event was actually slightly more energetic than Australia’s most famous quake – the 1989 Newcastle earthquake (M5.5) in New South Wales that tragically killed 13 people. The crucial difference was location: this quake struck a sparsely populated rural area. “In this case we are lucky it wasn’t closer to any of the big towns along the coast,” Salmon said. Indeed, had a magnitude 5.6 quake occurred directly under a city, damage could have been much worse. Instead, apart from some cracked plaster, falling roof tiles, and grocery store items tossed from shelves, Queenslanders got away relatively unscathed – if a bit shaken in spirit.

Why a ‘Stable’ State Got Shaken: Australia’s Intraplate Stress

Earthquakes are most commonly associated with the jagged boundaries of Earth’s tectonic plates – think of the Pacific “Ring of Fire” or the Himalayan front – but they can and do occur in the continents’ interior as well. Australia, lying entirely on the Indo-Australian tectonic plate, is thousands of kilometres from the nearest active plate boundary. In geological terms, it’s a stable continental region. Queensland in particular has a reputation for very low seismic activity; in fact, it is considered “the least seismically active state” in the country. So why did the ground suddenly heave in a place so seemingly far from Earth’s crustal tensions?

The answer lies in the slow but inexorable forces acting on the Indo-Australian Plate. Australia’s tectonic plate is not static – it’s actually the fastest-moving continental landmass on Earth, drifting about 7 centimetres northeast each year. The northern boundary of the Indo-Australian Plate (directly north of Queensland) is actually one of the most complex tectonic zones on Earth.

• To the northwest, Australia is colliding with the Eurasian Plate
• To the northeast, it collides with the Pacific Plate and smaller microplates

This means that Australia’s “northward push” is resisted by a messy collision and subduction system stretching from Sumatra–Java–Timor (west) through to New Guinea–Bismarck–Solomons (east).

*Image shows the location of the earthquake epicentre. 

As it plows northward, it squeezes itself like a giant spring. This generates a buildup of compressive stress across the plate’s interior. Think of the Australian continent as a vast concrete slab being subtly but persistently squeezed at its edges; eventually, that stress has to release somewhere. According to Geoscience Australia, “this generates mainly compressive stress in the interior of the Australian continent, which is slowly building up… Australia’s earthquakes are caused by the sudden release of this stress when rocks deep underground break and move along a fault line”.

In practice, that means that even in the middle of a stable plate, ancient cracks in the crust can rupture if enough energy accumulates. These mid-plate quakes are called intraplate earthquakes, and while less frequent than boundary quakes, they are not unusual in geologic history. Over time, the continual push and pull from plate motions find the weak zones under Australia – typically pre-existing fault lines – and relieve stress there in bursts. “Large earthquakes can occur anywhere across the continent, and without warning,” Geoscience Australia cautions. The 5.6 tremor in Queensland is a textbook example: the Indo-Australian plate’s gradual compression finally overcame friction along an old fault, resulting in a sudden slip – an earthquake.

*Image of the felt report chart from Geoscience Australia's website.

The Perry Fault: Ancient Origins of the Quake

Geologists suspect that the culprit behind this quake was the Perry Fault, a long-dormant fault line running through south-east Queensland. So what is the Perry Fault, and where did it come from? It turns out this fault is an ancient feature of the Australian crust – a geological scar from hundreds of millions of years ago. The Perry Fault is a major regional strike-slip fault (a type of sideways-sliding fault structure) and part of the New England Orogenic Belt in Queensland. In simpler terms, it’s one of the deep-seated cracks in the bedrock that formed during the tumultuous assembly of eastern Australia in the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras.

The Perry Fault itself likely dates to the Triassic period (~215 million years ago) during the final stages of an orogeny. An orogeny, when simplified, is a mountain building event. Geological studies indicate that around 215–212 million years ago, a small continental fragment (geologists call it the Kin Kin terrane) rammed into the Queensland margin, deforming the crust. That collision and the associated crustal stresses left behind the Perry Fault as a large tear in the earth’s crust. In essence, the fault is an ancient plate boundary remnant, a product of long-ago tectonic upheavals.

Over the eons since, Queensland’s bedrock has been relatively quiet. The Perry Fault hasn’t slipped violently in modern times; it’s what scientists would consider a “dormant” fault – until the stress from afar reactivates it. When Australia’s plate-wide pressure cooker builds enough pressure, these old weaknesses can fail. The M5.6 quake was likely one such failure along the Perry Fault. It’s a striking example of how “pre-existing fractures or zones of weakness” (as Geoscience Australia describes faults) can awaken after millennia of silence.

*Approximate location and extent of the Perry Fault

A Stable Continent under Pressure

From a global perspective, Australia is often perceived as “seismically safe” – and compared to places like Japan or Indonesia, it is. But “stable” doesn’t mean immovable. The compressive forces from plate motion are continuously at work on the Australian continent. Over decades and centuries, stress accumulates imperceptibly. We don’t notice a centimeter of northward drift each year, but the rocks remember. They store elastic energy much like a compressed spring. When that energy releases, the ground trembles. In geological terms, Australia’s interior is crisscrossed by countless ancient faults (most of them inactive most of the time). Any one of them can produce an earthquake if loaded with enough stress.

Notably, seismic hazard maps and studies have identified that even within Australia, some regions have higher potential than others – for example, the eastern highlands running through Queensland down to Victoria have seen more intraplate quakes historically. But this recent earthquake reinforces a key point of earth science: earthquake rarity is no guarantee of earthquake impossibility.

In fact, on average Australia experiences an earthquake of magnitude 5 or greater roughly every one to two years, somewhere on the continent. Many of these occur in more seismically active parts of the plate (for instance, Western Australia or the NT have fairly frequent small quakes). Queensland’s turn came this time, reminding everyone that the entire continent is under the influence of tectonic forces.

*Image shows the New England Orogen Extent

*Image Shows The Wandilla Province within which exists the Kin Kin Terrane (Not Directly Listed)

Aftershocks and Looking Ahead

Following the main shock, it’s normal for the stressed fault to continue adjusting through smaller tremors. Indeed, aftershocks are expected in the days and weeks after the magnitude 5.6 quake. These aftershocks are essentially the crust’s way of settling back into a relaxed state, and they tend to be much lower in magnitude than the main event. Geoscience Australia and local seismograph stations have been monitoring closely. Residents in the Kilkivan/Gympie region were advised that they “can certainly expect more aftershocks from this event”, though any subsequent shakes will probably just be light rattles. For the anxious locals who spent the day checking on neighbours and inspecting homes for cracks, this guidance helps set expectations that the earthquake sequence isn’t necessarily over – but the worst is almost surely past.

What does this earthquake mean in the big picture? For one, it has provided an invaluable case study of a significant intraplate earthquake in Queensland. Scientists will use data from this quake – the seismic wave recordings, the distribution of shaking reports, and any geological surveys of the fault area – to refine their understanding of the region’s seismic hazard. The event is a wake-up call that even in a “low-risk” place, robust preparedness and public awareness are important. Emergency services responded swiftly, and luckily damage was minor, but imagine if a similar quake struck directly under Brisbane or another city – knowing how to react (“Drop, Cover, and Hold”) is essential knowledge everywhere.

In a way, the 5.6 quake was the earth giving a brief reminder of its dynamic nature, even under the seemingly solid ground of Queensland. As the aftershocks fade, life in the Sunshine State will return to normal, but with a new appreciation that Australia’s ancient, quiet landscape can still surprise us. The Indo-Australian Plate will continue its slow northward march, and the Perry Fault and its kin will lie in wait. It might be decades or centuries before a similar event in this area – hopefully longer – but the lessons learned now will help ensure that if and when the earth moves again, we’ll be even more ready to understand and withstand it.