Earthquake shakes thousands across Melbourne and southern Victoria

A moderate earthquake has struck Victoria, shaking thousands of people in the middle of the night from Melbourne down to Gippsland.

The magnitude 4.3 tremor hit at a depth of eight kilometres in Leongatha, about 110 kilometres south-east of the state capital, around 12.50am today, according to Geoscience Australia.

The National Earthquake Alerts Centre said more than 4000 people felt the shaking in an area stretching from Wilsons Promontory, on the Gippsland coast, up to Sunbury in north-west Melbourne.

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It's a little more than three months since a magnitude 5.0 quake rattled south-west Victoria, waking thousands and knocking food to the floor of supermarkets. 

Seismologist Adam Pascale said it was strong enough to wake him in Melbourne's north.

"It's somewhere we had a magnitude 3 earlier this week and now this is a larger event, so that was obviously a foreshock," he said, in a video posted to social media.

The Seismology Research Centre chief scientist said several magnitude 2 aftershocks in the hour after the man shake were not surprising.