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Speaker 1: You're listening to a Muma Mea podcast. Mumma Mea acknowledges

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Speaker 1: the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast

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Speaker 1: is recorded on.

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Speaker 2: Hi.

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Speaker 1: I'm Claire Murphy. This is Mumma MIA's daily news podcast,

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Speaker 1: The Quickie. Between last week and this week, there have

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Speaker 1: been several major earthquakes across the country, with one in

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Speaker 1: particular raising questions about how much Australia's mining companies are

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Speaker 1: contributing to the increase in seismic activity. Today we'll speak

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Speaker 1: to an earthquake expert to find out whether humans are

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Speaker 1: making the ground a little more shaky. But before we do,

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Speaker 1: here's the latest from the Quikie newsroom. Wednesday, August twenty eight.

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Speaker 1: There are predictions that ticket sales for the Oasis reunion

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Speaker 1: tour next year could dwarf even Taylor Swift's EERU shows.

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Speaker 1: British music journalist and producer DJ Kevin McManus reminded ITV

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Speaker 1: that almost four percent of the entire population of the

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Speaker 1: UK tried to get tickets to Oasis to Nebworth shows

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Speaker 1: back in nineteen ninety six, nually selling two hundred and

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Speaker 1: fifty thousand. He says people still talk about those shows,

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Speaker 1: and this time around it could be even bigger. He's

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Speaker 1: also wondering if people will go just to see if

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Speaker 1: the brothers Liam and Noel will fall out before the

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Speaker 1: first show or the fifth. Oway says will perform a

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Speaker 1: series of live shows in the UK and Ireland next year.

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Speaker 1: Experts predicting with ticket sales, sponsorships, merch and film rights,

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Speaker 1: the brothers could make over four hundred million pounds, the

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Speaker 1: equivalent of nearly eight hundred million. Australian unions have slammed

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Speaker 1: the Fairwork Ombardsmen, saying threats to dock construction workers pay

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Speaker 1: for walking off the job to rally in support of

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Speaker 1: the CFMEU yesterday are baseless and misleading. Attorney General Mark

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Speaker 1: Drefers placed the CFMEU into administration last week after claims

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Speaker 1: they've been involved in corruption and bullying and had been

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Speaker 1: infiltrated by organized crime. Anger over the decision saw thousands

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Speaker 1: of workers attend rallies across the country despite threats from

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Speaker 1: the Fairwork Ombardsmen that unsanctioned industrial action could see them

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Speaker 1: docked four hours pay. The union say this was not

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Speaker 1: industrial action and to call it so is misleading, saying

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Speaker 1: they were uniting to protest what they believe is an

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Speaker 1: attack on basic workers' rights and procedural fairness. The Israeli

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Speaker 1: Defense Force has managed to rescue another hostage in a

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Speaker 1: complex operation, more than ten months after he was captured

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Speaker 1: in the October seven attack. Fifty two year old kade

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Speaker 1: Fahan al Khadi, a member of the Bedouin community in

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Speaker 1: southern Israel, was rescued from a tunnel in southern Gaza.

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Speaker 1: The details of how he was located and extracted have

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Speaker 1: not been shared, authorities saying it could compromise the security

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Speaker 1: of both the remaining hostages and the IDF. Israeli Prime

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Speaker 1: Mister Benjamin Ettanya, who says they will continue to bring

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Speaker 1: hostages home through both negotiations and rescue operations, saying both

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Speaker 1: require Israel to have a military presence in the field

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Speaker 1: and unceasing military pressure on Hamas. Prince Harry has announced

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Speaker 1: his next royal not royal visit, heading to New York

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Speaker 1: next month. Harry will be doing this trip solo, Megan

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Speaker 1: staying home with the kids while he visit. It's the

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Speaker 1: City that Never sleeps during the UN General Assembly, High

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Speaker 1: Level Week and Climate Week. While he's there, Harry is

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Speaker 1: set to advance a number of his patronages while attending

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Speaker 1: several engagements with African Parks, the Halo Trust, the Diana

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Speaker 1: Award and Travelist. He'll also be furthering the work of

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Speaker 1: the Archwell Foundation, which recently launched an initiative to help

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Speaker 1: parents deal with online bullying. Harry's travel plans come as

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Speaker 1: a new theory has emerged as to why his father,

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Speaker 1: King Charles, is trying to move his disgraced brother Andrew

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Speaker 1: out of the Royal Lodge. Richard Eden from The Daily

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Speaker 1: Mail says he believes it's a potential future home for

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Speaker 1: Queen Camilla should she outlive him. The theory also casting

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Speaker 1: into doubt the King's current health situation as to why

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Speaker 1: he's making these moves with such urgency. That's What's happening

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Speaker 1: around the world today. Next, we find out if digging

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Speaker 1: up Cole might just be making the Hunter Valley in

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Speaker 1: New South Wales earthquake central. If you drive away from

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Speaker 1: Sydney Northwest to the Hunter Valley, you are first greeted

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Speaker 1: by picturesque wine country, stunning valleys dotted with vineyards and

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Speaker 1: wedding receptions where tourists had to enjoy a weekend away,

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Speaker 1: but go just a little bit further west to the

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Speaker 1: town of Singleton and you'll start to catch glimpses from

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Speaker 1: the highway of colossal open cut coal mines. The tiny

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Speaker 1: vehicles on its fast slopes brought into perspective when one

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Speaker 1: crosses a bridge, even just the wheels of the trucks

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Speaker 1: much bigger than a human. One of these mines is

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Speaker 1: between two Hunter Valley towns, Musselbrook and Denman. Owned by BHP,

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Speaker 1: the Mount Arthur mine employs around two thousand people. It's

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Speaker 1: almost at the end of its life, operations expected to

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Speaker 1: wrap up in twenty thirty, but on Friday it became

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Speaker 1: the epicenter of a four point seven magnitude earthquake. The

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Speaker 1: map show the center of the quake located near the

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Speaker 1: middle of the pit, shaking nearby towns. Just after midday

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Speaker 1: on Friday, the rattle felt as far away as Sydney.

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Speaker 1: Since then, there have been many after shocks that have

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Speaker 1: continued through the weekend and into the start of this week.

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Speaker 1: The people who live and work in the region are

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Speaker 1: a little worried, especially after this quake brought down the

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Speaker 1: roofs of several local businesses. Damaged buildings, cracked windows and

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Speaker 1: caused the power to go out for several hours. But

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Speaker 1: they're also used to living with the sounds and feel

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Speaker 1: of living near mining activity.

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Speaker 2: Was that another after shock? Honestly, I can't tell if

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Speaker 2: it's mind blasts. Half the time I reckon there was

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Speaker 2: another tremor at about eleven felt it at Charlestown too.

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Speaker 2: That's at least sixteen since they started.

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Speaker 1: But with the location of the quake's epicenter, the arguments

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Speaker 1: began over where the mining can cause seismic activity. I

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Speaker 1: just wonder how many more artificial earthquakes are going to

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Speaker 1: be created from the Hunter Valley's finest mining industry.

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Speaker 2: What would you rather the odd rumble or thousands unemployed?

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Speaker 1: The Mount Arthur mind quake wasn't the only major tremor

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Speaker 1: in Australia these past few days. Over in WA's wheat belts,

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Speaker 1: there have been several tremors this last week, the largest

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Speaker 1: of four point four magnitude registering in Wildcatchum and felt

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Speaker 1: up to two hundred kilometers away. Thirty minutes later, another

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Speaker 1: four point one magnitude quake struck the same area, with

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Speaker 1: locals told to expect the earth to continue to shake

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Speaker 1: for days, maybe even weeks to come. There was also

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Speaker 1: a three point zero magnitude earthquake in Victoria's Gippsland region

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Speaker 1: on Monday night around eight pm. The center of the

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Speaker 1: tremor was at Sandy Point, near Wilson's Promontory and felt

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Speaker 1: as far away as Foster Leon, Gather and Inverlock. Just

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Speaker 1: three weeks ago, there was a four point seven level

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Speaker 1: quake in Victoria's high country. So is this normal or

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Speaker 1: do we need to be concerned that Australia's ground it's

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Speaker 1: getting a little too shaky. Jonathan Griffin is a senior

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Speaker 1: seismologist at Geoscience Australia. Jonathan, just to start, can you

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Speaker 1: tell us just how many earthquakes we generally have each

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Speaker 1: year here in Australia.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So across Australia we register about one hundred magnitude

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Speaker 2: three earthquakes every year, and we get about one or

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Speaker 2: two magnitude five earthquakes or greater every year, and we

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Speaker 2: get a magnitude six sort of every five to ten

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Speaker 2: years on average.

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Speaker 1: So those magnitude four point some things that we've experienced

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Speaker 1: the last week in Wa and in New South Wales.

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Speaker 1: How regularly would we have something like that, And they

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Speaker 1: generally in places where we don't register that much of

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Speaker 1: an issue because they're away from civilization.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so, as you know, Australia is very sparsely populated.

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Speaker 2: Earthquakes can happen anywhere across the continent and therefore they

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Speaker 2: often occur where very few people are and maybe aren't

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Speaker 2: felt by a lot of people. Certainly, this has been

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Speaker 2: a more interesting week than average, with a couple of

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Speaker 2: fours over in wa will Cutcham and then the two

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Speaker 2: fours New Muscle Brook over the last few days as well.

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Speaker 2: So that's not what happens every week, and it's made

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Speaker 2: it interesting, certainly to have these two events happening either

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Speaker 2: side of the continent. But they're not connected. They're simply

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Speaker 2: too far away and the earthquakes aren't big enough or

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Speaker 2: close enough to interact with each other. We like to

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Speaker 2: draw conclusions that maybe they're linked, but certainly in this

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Speaker 2: case they're not.

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Speaker 1: Now we've spoken to you about this before, about the

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Speaker 1: fact that Australia the continent itself, doesn't really sit on

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Speaker 1: any of the major tectonic plates like some other countries do,

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Speaker 1: which is why we don't tend to get the very

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Speaker 1: big earthquakes, but we do still have fault lines that

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Speaker 1: run across the country, right, that's right.

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Speaker 2: Australia is a very ancient continent and while it's a

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Speaker 2: stable continental area in now so we occupy the interior

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Speaker 2: of a techonic plate, the Australia India Plate, and that

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Speaker 2: plate is moving north northeast at about seven centimeters a year.

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Speaker 2: As it does that, it's crashing into the Pacific Plade

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Speaker 2: to the north in pav New Guinea, Indonesia, to the

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Speaker 2: east in New Zealand. And it's at those plate boundaries

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Speaker 2: where most earthquakes occur and now largest earthquakes occur. But

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Speaker 2: despite that, the crashing into other plates at the boundary,

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Speaker 2: that causes stresses in the crust of Australia itself. So

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Speaker 2: our continent is being squeezed from the plate boundary and

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Speaker 2: we have old fault line. You know, in the past,

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Speaker 2: as the continent of Australia formed, you had more active

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Speaker 2: faults and these faults are still there. There's still weaknesses

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Speaker 2: in the crust and by squeezing the crust, those weaknesses

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Speaker 2: can fail and that's what causes an earthquake.

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Speaker 1: Well can we talk about whether man can actually have

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Speaker 1: an impact on when those faults fail, because obviously the

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Speaker 1: epicenter of the musclebrook Denman quake was basically in the

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Speaker 1: middle of a major coal mine, and a lot of

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Speaker 1: conversation has been happening about weather digging up that amount

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Speaker 1: of dirt from that one spot, which obviously sits on

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Speaker 1: a fault line, has an impact on whether it will

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Speaker 1: increase sizemic activity. Could that be the cakes?

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Speaker 2: So human activity can induce earthquakes. I was talking before

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Speaker 2: how the Australian continent is being stressed by these big

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Speaker 2: plate boundary forces. That's sort of the cause of the earthquakes.

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Speaker 2: But we can then locally, through various human activities affect

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Speaker 2: that the stress field locally around so activities like mining

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Speaker 2: where you take a load of rock off the earth,

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Speaker 2: or other activities such as filling water reservoirs. You know,

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Speaker 2: you add a big load of water on top of

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Speaker 2: an area that didn't previously have it. That can locally

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Speaker 2: affect the stress field and it can induce earthquakes to happen.

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Speaker 2: And we've seen that around the world, both in terms

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Speaker 2: of mining, you know, water reservoirs, and also sometimes hydraulic fracking.

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Speaker 2: So there's all these mechanisms that I sort of known

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Speaker 2: to induce earthquakes. What's really difficult is when any particular

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Speaker 2: earthquake happens like this one, to actually say yes, it

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Speaker 2: was caused by mining or no it wasn't. To do that,

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Speaker 2: you sort of need really higher level monitoring, seismic monitoring,

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Speaker 2: lots of instruments closely around where these earthquakes occurred. Certainly

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Speaker 2: a GEOSUNS Australia where you run a national network that

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Speaker 2: just doesn't have the resolution to do that. So, you know,

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Speaker 2: while we can say that, you know, there's been plenty

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Speaker 2: of earthquakes over the years in the Hunter Valley, and

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Speaker 2: it's certainly possible that at least some of them have

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Speaker 2: been induced by mining, what we can't do is go

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Speaker 2: and point to any particular event like these ones that

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Speaker 2: happened over the weekend and yes, they definitely were due

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Speaker 2: to mining.

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Speaker 1: A lot of the conversation that's been happening around here too,

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Speaker 1: is that, in fact, there's no coincidence that mines end

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Speaker 1: up being quite near or even on top of fault lines,

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Speaker 1: because that seismic activity creates a lot of geological wondrous

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Speaker 1: things to happen, like coal seams or gold seams or

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Speaker 1: many other different things. So it's not a coincidence, and

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Speaker 1: that some minds will line up with fault lines.

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Speaker 2: Right, yes, exactly right. So the great example is Calgoley

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Speaker 2: over in Wa a mass evolved fault zone, and all

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Speaker 2: the gold mineralization has happened along that. The coal mine

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Speaker 2: in the Hunter Valley are less, you know, the coals

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Speaker 2: not formed by faulting in the same way, it's the

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Speaker 2: accumulation of plants essentially over long periods of time. But

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Speaker 2: certainly that's true that some of our major minds are

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Speaker 2: located on very old faults, and so you do have

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Speaker 2: the kind of potentially weaknesses there that can fail again.

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Speaker 1: Now, in the case of the Wa quake near while

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Speaker 1: Catchum and the one in the Hunter Valley, or the

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Speaker 1: two big ones really in the Hunter Valley, there have

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Speaker 1: been maybe even dozens of after shocks now and it's

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Speaker 1: days and days later. How long do after shocks generally

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Speaker 1: tend to go for? Is there any period of time

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Speaker 1: that you can say, okay, now was sort of out

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Speaker 1: of that period?

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Speaker 2: So after shots over time they tend to get smaller

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Speaker 2: in magnitude and happen less frequently. What we do see

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Speaker 2: in Australia is that some of our aftershot sequences do

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Speaker 2: last for quite a long time. So some of your

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Speaker 2: listeners may remember our largest earthquake to occur since we've

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Speaker 2: been recording them, what was the main Stift six point

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Speaker 2: six tenant Creaker quake that happened in nineteen eighty eight.

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Speaker 2: Now we still get aftershocks from that event happening today

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Speaker 2: every now and then, not be a mainitude three or

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Speaker 2: something that pops off in the same location. So in

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Speaker 2: some areas they can last for a very long time.

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Speaker 2: They seem to decay off more quickly in Eastern Australia,

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Speaker 2: which is geologically a bit younger, but certainly if you're

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Speaker 2: listening to remember the wolds Point earthquake in Victoria and

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Speaker 2: in twenty twenty one that gave Melbourne a really good shake.

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Speaker 2: We're still seeing aftershocks from that event occasionally now as well.

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Speaker 2: So while most of them happen in the days and

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Speaker 2: weeks after the main shock, we can see those sequences

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Speaker 2: go on for quite some time.

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Speaker 1: Just finally, Jonathan, we don't want to scare anyone, but

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Speaker 1: is there any way to map out where we presume

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Speaker 1: or predict the next biggest earthquake might be depending on

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Speaker 1: what seismic activity has been happening in recent times.

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Speaker 2: So we can't predict earthquakes. At Geoscience Australia we produce

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Speaker 2: the National Seismic Hazard Assessment, which is basically a model

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Speaker 2: of where we think earthquakes could happen in the future

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Speaker 2: and what the ground shaking from that would be. And

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Speaker 2: that's the kind of information that can then be used

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Speaker 2: to design buildings and other infrastructure to be resilient to

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Speaker 2: the level of shaking that we think we might see.

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Speaker 2: As I said, we can't predict earthquakes. We do know

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Speaker 2: that we get aftershot sequences, So where you have had

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Speaker 2: an earthquake, chances are you're going to get more earthquakes

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Speaker 2: happening over the next little while we'd expect more will

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Speaker 2: happen in a muscle brook and while catch them. After

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Speaker 2: these events, typically they get smaller over time, but occasionally

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Speaker 2: you get a bigger one occurring as well.

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Speaker 1: According to the Smart Traveler website, if you do find

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Speaker 1: yourself in the midst of an earthquake, the advice is

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Speaker 1: to drop down to the floor on your hands and knees,

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Speaker 1: cover your head and neck, or hop under something that

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Speaker 1: can shield you from falling debris, like a table, But

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Speaker 1: move around as little as possible. Stay calm, stay away

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Speaker 1: from windows, and stay inside until the shaking stops. Injuries

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Speaker 1: can happen if people move around too soon and the

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Speaker 1: shaking hasn't quite finished or things haven't stopped moving and falling.

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Speaker 1: Use stairs rather than an elevator when you do go

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Speaker 1: to leave the building, as earthquakes do tend to cut power.

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Speaker 1: If you're outside, you're told to lie on the ground

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Speaker 1: or drop to your hands and knees, cover your head

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Speaker 1: and neck, and stay away from buildings, power lines, or

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Speaker 1: street lights if you can. If you're driving, pull over

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Speaker 1: and avoid bridges or overpasses if possible. Stay in your

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Speaker 1: car with your seat belt on until the shaking stops.

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Speaker 1: If you are in your car and a power line

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Speaker 1: comes down, don't get out, wait till someone comes to help.

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Speaker 1: If you're driving somewhere mountainous, look out for falling rocks

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Speaker 1: or landslides. Now, lucky for us, we won't get the

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Speaker 1: big shakes like they do in places where the tectonic

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Speaker 1: plates meet, but it's better to be safe than sorry.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for taking some time to feed your mind today.

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Speaker 1: The quickie is produced by me Claire Murphy and our

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Speaker 1: senior producer Taylor Strato, with audio production by tomline

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Speaker 2: A Speci