Director at the Australian Seismological Centre in Canberra Kevin McCue said a 3.2 magnitude earthquake on Monday night at Frogmore could be a sign of things to come.

"This morning a small, shallow, magnitude 3.2 earthquake was recorded on the network at 12 minutes past 3am," he said.

"It was big enough to be quite strongly felt if you were within 10km of the epicentre."

Mr McCue said that a series of smaller earthquakes could potentially lead to a larger, more serious earthquake with a magnitude 5 or higher.

He said earthquakes are often overlooked because damaging events are rare compared to other natural disasters.

"The trouble is the frequency of such events is so low compared with bushfires, droughts and floods let alone cyclones for those on the Qld and WA north coasts," Mr McCue said.

"We cannot predict earthquakes, but there is a 10 per cent chance of [a one in] 500 year earthquake occurring in any 50 years, the next 50; or similarly that the 100 years earthquake has a 10 per cent chance of occurring in the next 10 years."

Cowra was shaken last year with a magnitude 3.8 with an epicentre 10km north of Boorowa.

There were no reports of damage, but the tremor was felt in towns as far away as Goulburn.

Mr McCue said there have been stronger earthquakes in the region in the past.

"There have been much bigger earthquakes; big enough to cause structural damage and even death," he said.

"I just want to make sure people know these are still happening."

Earthquakes occur when rocks break and move as a result of stresses caused by tectonic plates.

However, earthquakes are rare in Australia as it is located in the middle of the Indo-Australian tectonic plate, with no major fault lines running through the country.

But Mr McCue said that even though the nearest fault line to the region runs through New Zealand and other island nations in the Pacific Ocean, there are minor fault lines running through Australia.

"There are [minor] faults everywhere in Australia," he said.

"Because our continent is so old, there has been plenty of time for these faults to occur."

He said these minor fault lines are caused when the Indo Australian plate rubs alongside the Pacific plate.

"It's stressing the internal part of the plate that we live on," Mr McCue said.

"And the stress imposed by these plate boundaries is enough to cause local earthquakes."