DANGER is all around us. While Australia sits pretty in the middle of a large continental plate, our slow drift to the north-east causes chaos, encircling us in a massive ring of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.
''We've got the most active areas in the world to our north and east,'' said Gary Gibson, a seismologist at Environmental Systems and Services in Melbourne. ''We are in the centre of the seismological world.''
Out near Samoa, our plate meets its match - the mighty Pacific plate that is thrusting westward under ours at a rate of 86 millimetres a year.
North near Sumatra, the opposite is happening. It is being dragged under the Sunda plate with about 65 millimetres a year disappearing almost straight down to be recycled deep in the earth.
While these movements at plate boundaries sound minuscule, their impact is colossal, as shown by the two unrelated events this week, on one day: the magnitude 8.1 earthquake and local tsunami near Samoa, and the magnitude 7.6 earthquake near Panang.
Earthquakes and tsunami have long racked our region, and despite new technologies to detect them, some ancient wisdom needs to be revived to survive, say scientists. FULL STORY
