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However, reports from Moe where the quake was felt strongest say that people were screaming and running into streets and panic stricken dogs were howling.
The quake was also felt quite widely distributed across the state, with reported tremors felt as far north as Albury on the NSW border.
The US Geological Survey operates the primary data collection service for earthquakes around the world and they were quickly able to provide details for this event.
Watching Facebook and Twitter as it happened, the region lit up with reports from as far afield as Ararat to the west, Tumut to the north and Bairnsdale to the east. Within moments, it was the top trending topic on Twitter throughout Australia. the USGS self-reporting tool contains public-submitted data from even wider afield.
Here in Melbourne, it felt (to this writer's semi-expert senses) to be around magnitude 3.5 – 3.8.
The geosciences Australia website immediately crashed as thousands of residents flocked to it for information; at the time of writing it was still unavailable.
Currently, no reports of major damage have been received, although emergency services has reported an increasing number of calls flooding in, but it would be reasonable to expect minor damage (items falling from shelves etc) in locations close to the epicentre.
Update (11:20pm): the Geosciences Australia page is now loading, albeit slowly. Details (not yet declared 'final' on the site) are available here. Observe that there seemed to be a minor pre-shock about 12 seconds before the main event and that the main quake was clearly composed of four distinct events of about 4 seconds each, separated by around 2 seconds - these probably represent the cyclical (or wave-like) nature of the shaking.
Update 20 July (8:10pm): A new earthquake has rocked Melbourne with an epicentre near the same region!
