The tremor struck about 3.30pm local time (0530 GMT) about 124 kilometres southeast of Townsville at a depth of 10 kilometres, according to the United States Geological Survey.
A low rumbling was felt at Magnetic Island, a 20-minute ferry ride from the mainland and part of the Great Barrier Reef, according to a hotelier at the All Seasons resort, where it briefly interrupted a wedding on the beach.
"Some of the guests felt a bit of a shake, nothing much. It wasn`t major, no-one fell over and nothing was damaged," she said.
"It was just like a shudder, my office backs onto the laundry and I said `Oh, that was a big spin cycle.` It hasn`t stopped the world up here.
"We are alive and well at the moment and please God that`s how we are going to stay."
There were no immediate reports of damage and no tsunami alert was issued.
In Townsville, a tropical city renowned for its easygoing lifestyle, residents said they hadn`t felt a thing.
"Look, we`re pretty laid-back around here and it`d take something more than that to shake us up," a publican at the local Molly Malone`s Irish Bar told AFP.
Geoscience Australia seismologist David Jepsen said the epicentre was about 60 kilometres west of Bowen town, which was in the path of top-intensity Cyclone Yasi earlier this year.
"Fortunately this is a sparsely populated part of Queensland. We couldn`t see much in the way of towns (in the quake zone), so that`s a good thing," said Jepsen.
Australia rarely experiences significant earthquakes, its land mass being some distance from the boundary of the Indo-Australian tectonic plate.
Jepsen said that quakes of a magnitude 5.5 happened statistically once a year on average but Australia had experienced a "lull" in recent years.
(U.KR-DLN/H-AK)
Editor: Priyambodo RH
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