"We just had an earthquake in Broome," one resident of the town said on Twitter. "The whole house was shaking and it went for ages. Never experienced anything like it before - quite amazing."
Such an earthquake was uncommon for the region, Phil Cummins, a seismologist with Geoscience Australia, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
"It's quite rare … you might see this event every 20 years," Cummins said.
Broome is located in the Kimberley region, a site for mining and petroleum production in Australia's northwest.
The earthquake was widely felt in Perth, the capital of Western Australia, a distance of more than 2,000 km (1,242 miles) away, data from Geoscience Australia showed. An aftershock of 4.1 was also recorded.