The official death toll from one of the biggest earthquakes on record stands at 300 this evening.
But more than 2 million Chileans have been affected by the 8.8 tremor.
Six of the country's 15 regions have been declared catastrophic zones.
The quake struck some 325 kilometres southwest of the capital Santiago.
The quake sparked panic around the Pacific Ring of Fire
prompting tsunami alerts in 50 countries including here in Australia.
The Queensland coastline was placed on alert.
Some swimmers have been ignoring warnings to keep out of the ocean.
This beach goer at Bondi says most people were just curious about what could happen.
We're at Dolphin Bay here and we're waiting for the tsunami to hit the east coast of Australia.
Here's again guys, this is Andy from the film factory.
Solder and I were running through the National Park when we heard there was a tsunami alert for the east coast of Australia.
Apparently an earthquake has hit Chile and it's caused a tsunami and it's heading our way.
Behind me, over my shoulder, there's a bunch of surface local Noosa Heads boys waiting for the waves to come.
They told us they're going to ride the waves if there are any.
We actually had a few waves hit about half an hour ago on the rocks quite substantial waves.
We've got footage of that, we'll show you right now.
This is the tsunami. It looks like it, it's pretty big. It's going to hit us.
Wooo!
They were good waves weren't they?
It could have been the tsunamis, maybe not.
One or two waves we don't know, it could be five waves or nothing.
It's a beautiful day.
It's a beautiful day. A bit of rain, a bit of sunshine.
The life savers say it's the first time in history both the water and sand from cool and gather to the sunshine coast has been completely off limits to the public.
Okay, so we're now at Main Beach. As you can see over my shoulder, it's dead empty. No one about. Everyone's been told to leave the beach because of the tsunami threat.
Now we've just been informed by the National Park Ranger. No one's allowed on the beach for the next three hours.
It's about two o'clock this afternoon, it's now quarter to twelve.
There's no facility there, but we have no plans to move the Grand Prix from Melbourne Park.
Okay guys, we've just driven from Nissa Heads where we live to summarise Sunshine Beach.
Behind me is Sunshine Beach Car Park. We're about to go onto Sunshine Beach to show you what the water's doing.
And then we're going to walk up to the Sunshine Beach Lookout. We've got to climb some stairs.
Behind me is Sunshine Beach. As you can see there's a bit of swell, but it's not too bad.
We're still on Tsunami Watch. We've just come down from the car park that we showed you before.
Now this is the beach. We're about to go over that way to the northern end of Sunshine Beach.
Climb up that hill and get some footage of the eastern coastline. Right now.
Okay guys, we've just reached the top of National Park at the northern end of Sunshine Beach.
There were soldiers going up the steps, my camera person for the day.
If a tsunami is going to hit, this is the best position to be. You're up high, you can see everything, you're not going to die.
Nothing's going to happen to you. You've got a video camera or a still camera in your hand.
You're going to be joining on the spot.
Okay, we've been here for half an hour in the heat, waiting for a tsunami that's not coming.
So we're going to get back to the studio and we'll go onto the Bureau of Meteorology website
and see what they've got to say about any updates of the tsunami. Okay, let's go.
The tsunami crossed the Pacific at the same speed as a jet airliner, about 800 kilometres an hour.
Its path meant New Zealand acted as a barrier for Australia's east coast, shielding us from potentially bigger waves.
70,000 people were moved to higher ground in Japan. As Boxing Day 2004 proved with devastating effect,
the tsunami is much longer than a normal wave, causing destruction measured in minutes, not seconds.
It seems this time that devastation has been avoided, except in Chile where there's weeks of misery to come.
Steve Bruce, 7 News.
