PET cats and dogs in Hamilton scarpered and weren’t the only ones startled from their sleep at about 2.12am on Sunday morning after a 5.0 local magnitude earthquake hit the Great Otway National Park that spread tremors across south west Victoria.

Multiple locals reported they were awoken to windows rattling and their houses and beds being shaken by the quake with an initial depth of seven kilometres.

The tremors spread across a 400-500km radius after the epicentre hit the small inland area of Wyelangta, inland from Victoria’s coastline.

Several smaller aftershocks were recorded at three separate intervals at 5.45am later Sunday morning, again at about 2.30pm in the afternoon and at 3.20am yesterday morning at a depth of 10km.

Geoscience Australia reported there were more than 8000 people who phoned in individual reports after feeling the tremors.

Several people blamed their partners for rocking the bed, while others remained oblivious and slept through the event.

“It was accompanied by wind which I initially blamed the rattling doors for,” one Hamilton resident said.

“But then the whole bed shook, and I knew it was a quake.

“I got up and checked the house for cracks and damage, but it was all good – but the cat sleeping on my son’s bed was spooked and hid under the bed.”

Geoscience Australia senior duty seismologist, Dr Tanja Pejic, said their organisation currently had a senior analyst working on the results of the quake.

It may be downgraded into a lower magnitude of 4.7,” she said.

“That is still fairly significant.

“They are measuring different things to garner a global best practice reading for magnitude reporting.”

Dr Pejic said the quake and aftershocks were confirmed through the sheer number of people that felt it and reported them.

“People can report what they feel (tremors) online,” she said.

“Right now, we have had 8336 reports and suspect there will be more.

“Some of the aftershocks have been reported.

The 3.6 aftershock has been reported by 118 people including from the Otways, Greater Melbourne and King Island.

“The 2.6 aftershocks were closer to the epicentre and were felt by few people.”

Dr Pejic said there are several fault lines running through the Otways - through all of Victoria.

“Generally, in Australia we have a lot of fault lines - particularly in the Otways,” she said.

Dr Pejic said that although Australia is conveniently located in the geographic centre of a tectonic plate, “they are moving north, northeast at the rate of approximately seven centimetres each year”.

“They are one of the fastest moving (plates) in the world,” she said.

“That means this is why we are getting earthquakes in Australia - despite the fact we are geographically centred in a plate.

“Our continent experiences stress which is released in the form of earthquakes.

“As an analogy - if you have a piece of paper and you pull at the opposite corners of that paper, what will happen is the paper will tear.

“If you push on the corners - the paper will crumple.

“So, imagine that is Australia - the middle still experiences stress.

“Places like California, New Zealand and Japan - they experience large tremors weekly - or daily because they are on the edge of tectonic plates.

“It is really common to have earthquakes in those countries.

“It does happen in Australia - it is rarer - but when we do, it is because we are on the edge of the plates.

“We experience fewer.”

A further 58 reports of aftershocks were recorded in the Otways on Monday afternoon at about 1.20pm, again reported as at a depth of 10km.