Australian officials said there would be "no wall of water coming over the horizon" after an 8.8-magnitude quake hit Chile and sent waves racing across the Pacific.

East coast beaches were closed and people were urged to avoid the water.

But scores of people ignored warnings of dangerous currents at Sydney's famous Bondi Beach and dipped into the water, and hundreds rushed to seaside outlooks to watch for giant waves.

"Initially everybody got out, however, people seem to be going back in and the tsunami warning is still active," Bondi lifesaver Jacob Waxs told AFP. "The surfers here in Bondi will still be out there when there's a shark alarm."

Bondi regular Lorentz Engdahl said beachgoers remained unconvinced of any danger, despite a Pacific Tsunami Warning Center alert being in place for Australia's east coast for most of the morning.

It was later lifted, as was an Australian maritime warning.

"Nothing has happened so I think that people have decided that nothing is going to happen," Engdahl told AFP.

"The biggest danger right now are the blue bottles," he said in reference to the stinging jellyfish that are a common nuisance on Australian beaches.

The Australian tsunami warning centre said water levels rose 50 centimetres (20 inches) at Norfolk Island off the east coast, by 20 centimetres at Queensland's Gold Coast and 17 centimetres on the southeast island of Tasmania.

In New Zealand, waves up to 1.5 metres (five feet) high rammed into the eastern Chatham Islands but there were no reports of serious damage.

New Zealand's entire east coast had been thought at risk of walls of water up to three metres high, but in the mid-afternoon the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management said the situation had stabilised and downgraded the tsunami warning to an advisory.

Residents on the Chatham Islands were moved to higher ground several hours before the first wave struck and families in low-lying areas of the South Island's Banks Peninsula and near Gisborne on the North Island were told to evacuate.

In the nearby South Pacific territories of Tonga, Samoa and American Samoa, where memories are still fresh of a tsunami that killed at least 118 last September, coastal residents moved to higher ground before dawn when the tsunami warnings were first issued.

In Tonga, there was the rare sight of hundreds of people massed in the grounds of the king's hillside mansion seeking sanctuary.

"Whole families are sleeping next to their cars and setting up a makeshift camp," AFP correspondent Mary Fonua said. They were able to return home unscathed a few hours later.

In the Cook Islands and Samoa hundreds took to the hills when tsunami warnings were issued and returned immediately when the all-clear was given.

But in New Zealand, largely unscathed from the Samoa tsunamis, people were in no hurry to take precautions, with emergency services reporting sightseers, surfers and swimmers heading for the water in areas that were being evacuated.

In Napier, on the eastern North Island, the Sunday market went ahead on the foreshore, while elsewhere fishermen headed out to sea in small boats or took up positions on rocky outcrops unconcerned by the warnings.

"I've got my flippers," one woman told the New Zealand Press Association.

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