“I was sitting down at work at my desk and I needed to run outside. It took me a while to work out what it was,” Mark Holcombe told public broadcaster ABC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We don’t have earthquakes that I am aware of — none of the locals I spoke to this morning had that experience with earthquakes here before — so it is one right out of left field.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emergency services said they had received calls for help as far away as Dubbo, about 700 kilometres (435 miles) from the quake epicentre, with fire and rescue crews dispatched to help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prime Minister Scott Morrison, speaking from New York, said there were no initial reports of injuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It can be a very, very disturbing event for an earthquake of this nature,” he said. “They are very rare events in Australia.”

Hundreds of demonstrators wearing work boots and hi-visibility jackets again marched through central Melbourne Wednesday in protest against vaccine requirements for construction workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Police again fired non-lethal rounds to disperse them, having warned further protests would “not be tolerated”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

hr-djw-arb\/al\/gle<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A rare quake rattled southeastern Australia on Wednesday, shaking buildings, knocking down walls and sending panicked Melbourne residents running into the streets. The shallow 5.9 magnitude tremor hit east of the country’s second-largest city at the start of the working day and was one of the largest to hit the country in decades. With Melbourne beginning its eighth week of pandemic lockdown and braced for a third straight day of violent anti-vaccine protests, most residents were at home when the quake struck. Zume Phim, 33, owner of Melbourne’s Oppen cafe, said he rushed onto the street as the tremor hit. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2209,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[544],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n