Residents in Western Australia's Goldfields-Esperance region were shaken awake overnight when a minor earthquake hit near the town of Norseman, 726 kilometres east of Perth.

Key points: Residents describe houses shaking during magnitude-4.3 earthquake

Residents describe houses shaking during magnitude-4.3 earthquake Minor earthquakes relatively common in region of late, Geoscience Australia says

Minor earthquakes relatively common in region of late, Geoscience Australia says Parts of Adelaide experienced a magnitude-3.2 earthquake last night

The magnitude-4.3 earthquake was recorded at a depth of 17 kilometres at 10:19pm.

Local residents described their windows shaking and patios rattling, but it is believed there was serious damage.

Several residents as far north as Kambalda, 60km from Kalgoorlie-Boulder, said they were woken by the tremor.

There were 28 official "felt" reports lodged with Geoscience Australia, with most of the reports coming from Esperance on the state's south coast.

"My house was shaking, windows rattling and my chair was shaking," Esperance resident Colleen Unwin said on Facebook.

"This one was quite strong and lasted a bit."

Residents of Nulsen in Esperance's western suburbs said the quake was "pretty intense".

Quake 'not unusual' for area: seismologist

Geoscience Australia seismologist Dan Jacksa said minor earthquakes were relatively common in the region of late.

A series of earthquakes in 2016 left cracks in Norseman's St Joseph's Catholic Church. ( ABC News: Nathan Morris )

A magnitude-4.7 earthquake struck Norseman on June 20, two years after it was declared Australia's shakiest town.

"This is quite an active area at the moment, it became active back with a magnitude-5 in May, 2016," he said.

"This is not unusual for that part of Australia, in fact they've [had] 20 recorded magnitude-4 and above earthquakes in the last 30 years."

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The tremors came after parts of Adelaide experienced a magnitude-3.2 earthquake last night, which reportedly shook parts of the Barossa Valley and the southern suburbs.

Adelaide locals described the sensation of the earthquake on social media, with many saying they heard low rumbling noises and experienced minor shaking.

ABC Radio Adelaide listeners inundated the station's switchboard with reports of the tremor from as far afield as the Barossa Valley, throughout the hills and into the southern suburbs.

"I was just lying in bed reading a book and I felt the whole room tremble," Andrew from Hahndorf said.

Trigger could have come from Indonesia

Mr Jacksa said while the Norseman and Adelaide earthquakes overnight would have felt powerful, it was unlikely they would have caused any serious damage.

"Earthquakes in Australia are always considered relatively shallow, but the depth of our crust that makes up the Australian continent varies from about 50 to 60 or 70 kilometres," he said.

"So most earthquakes occur near the surface, and so we tend to feel them a bit more than in other parts of the world.

"[Also] because Australia sits in the middle of a tectonic plate its earthquakes are a bit more random, they can occur pretty much anywhere … but they don't tend to be as big as the earthquakes on tectonic plate boundaries."

Mr Jacksa explained the earthquakes were likely related and could have been triggered by tectonic activity as far away as Indonesia.

There, the death toll from Sunday's devasting earthquake on the island of Lombok has risen to 347, according to a government-run news agency.

"Australia sits on the fastest moving continental tectonic plate on Earth and it's travelling at about 7 centimetres a year to the north, north-east and crashing into the southern part of Indonesia," he said.

"In fact, Papua New Guinea, or the New Guinea Island, is actually on the Australian plate and that's sort of crashing into the Pacific plate."

"As we have that movement to the north, the stress is transferred all the way from the plate boundaries to the north all the way through Australia."