The last time I experienced an earthquake was August 2016. I had arrived in Rome from Florence and was about halfway through my first trip to Italy ever. At around 3am I was woken by some shaking. My first thoughts were that this was not a dream. My second were that one bottle of red (a dry dolcetto I believe) over dinner the previous night was not going to be enough to cause the world to spin of its own accord.
Hence I deduced that it was probably an earthquake, something which I had experienced twice before.
Noting that Rome had stood for 2000 years, I decided to go back to sleep. [Lucky that I was not on the other side of the mountains in Umbria – 299 people lost their lives that night..]
The next day, as I walked around the ancient heart of the city, I was amused by the American tourists, complaining bitterly about the damage the earthquake had just caused to all the Roman buildings.
I am joking about this bit. But it is almost the kind of thing you would expect American tourists to say – they seem almost that naive.
So when the earthquake hit Melbourne this morning, I would not say that I was nonplussed, but I knew exactly what it was, although it seemed that a tiger was dancing around on my roof.
We are rather lucky in Melbourne. Aside from having Disaster Dan as our Premier (although the look of the current opposition front bench is so unappealing as to be almost repulsive unless you like lobsters with your Grange), we have little to complain about. The last earthquake was in 1982 and it was even milder than this one. Aside from some power outages and the collapse of a wall in a South Yarra burger bar, this one turned out to be fairly mild too.
Lost For Words! 