Magnitude 3.2 earthquake rattles Barraba in northern NSW

Residents in a small New South Wales town have been rattled by a strong earthquake, the latest in a “swarm” of tremors across the state.

The 3.2 magnitude earthquake struck near Barraba, 334km west of Coffs Harbour, just after 3am on Tuesday.

The quake occurred at a depth of 10km, and only a handful of people reported feeling it, Geoscience Australia reports.

It comes a week after another 3.2 magnitude earthquake rocked residents near Dalton, NSW — that tremor was also followed by “a dozen smaller quakes,” the Seismology Research Centre said.

Adam Pasquale, a seismologist and chief researcher at the Seismology Research Centre, said he felt the Dalton quake from inside a dam about 150km from the earthquake epicentre.

“Seems like a long way away to notice a magnitude (3.2), but we’re on some old hard crust here in Australia that allows energy waves to travel a good distance,” Pasquale said.

He called the subsequent cluster of reoccurring earthquake events was common for the area.

“Earthquake swarms pop up almost every year in the Dalton-Gunning-Oolong area in NSW, with records dating back as far as 1888,” he said.

An average of 100 earthquakes of a magnitude 3 are recorded in Australia each year, according to Geoscience Australia.