Darwin has been shaken by a magnitude 5.4 earthquake in Indonesia's Banda Sea, but a seismologist says people closer to the epicentre may not have felt a thing.
Geoscience Australia duty seismologist Dan Connolly said the quake occurred about 7.35am (ACST) on Tuesday at a depth of 166km and about 600km north of Darwin.
He said "about a dozen" people in the Darwin area reported to Geoscience Australia that they had felt the quake, some describing the quake as a rolling sensation or a "small but exciting little tremor".
But Mr Connolly said its unlikely that anyone nearer the epicentre felt the quake.
"There is a strange little phenomenon in this part of the world with a deep quake like this in the Banda Sea that it radiates towards Australia so they can be felt in Darwin but are hardly felt in the area where they occur," he said.
Mr Connolly said there was no damage in Darwin and, given the region's geology and isolation, it was unlikely there would be any damage elsewhere.
The nearest major population centre, Dili in Timor L'este, is more than 350km from the epicentre.
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