A 5.6 magnitude earthquake has been felt in Western Australia’s south-west region.

The Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Centre detected the earthquake just before 1pm, local time, on Sunday.

The WA Bureau of Meteorology said the quake was centred near Lake Muir, just north of Walpole, and could be felt through a large section of the state’s south-west, including in Perth’s metropolitan area.

There is no tsunami threat to the Australian mainland, island or territories, the tsunami warning centre said.

Bureau of Meteorology, Western Australia (@BOM_WA) A 5.6 magnitude earthquake centred near Lake Muir (north of Walpole) WA occurred at about 1.05pm WST Sunday. Our local forecasters in our local forecasting office building swayed here in West Perth for a few minutes - quite disconcerting.

The Bureau of Meteorology said forecasters working in its West Perth headquarters felt the building sway.

Jill Cross, a Dardanup resident, told the ABC she was watching TV when she felt her house shaking.

“I thought ‘am I having a bit of a giddy turn or something?’,” she said. “The ceiling fans and the light fittings were all swaying.”

A worker at Walpole’s Tree Top Walk told Fairfax Media that people were on the 40m high walkway when the earth started to shake.

“We had a couple of tremors over the last few days but this was much bigger.”

A Geoscience Australia senior seismologist, Phil Cummins, said West Australians might feel aftershocks from the 5.6 magnitude earthquake for days.

Cummins said he expected aftershocks “of decreasing magnitude and size” to continue for some time.

While residents in Perth have reported feeling the earthquake more than 400km away, Cummins did not expect noticeable aftershocks there. But residents in Walpole, nearer to the quake, may feel aftershocks for days.

He said those in the immediate vicinity of the quake could even feel the aftershocks for weeks.

“It is quite a rare event and especially to have it occurred in this place,” Cummins said. “On the south coast, earthquakes are more rare.”

The agency had no previous recorded earthquake above 5.0 magnitude in the immediate area of Sunday’s event, Cummins said.

“It has occurred because of the build-up of the stress in the Australian crust [in the tectonic plates],” he said. “Strong forces get transmitted across the Australian point and when it exceeds ... there’s an earthquake.”