Port Kembla: Live explosives found in military museum seized by ADF
Explosive experts, including the bomb squad, were called to an old Port Kembla museum on Thursday after live explosives, including grenades and a rocket launcher, were found onsite.
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A collection of wartime artefacts sparked a major police operation involving the bomb squad and Australian Defence Force on Thursday, after a routine inspection at an old museum uncovered an array of live explosives.
Police were called to the Breakwater Battery Museum at Port Kembla around 8am on Thursday morning, after licensing police discovered several worrying items, including undetonated hand grenades and a rocket launcher.
Licensing police attended the museum for a routine inspection, after volunteers aired plans to reopen to the public after more than two years of closed doors.
However, upon closer inspection police discovered up to 25 wartime explosives that appeared to be live.
“The police rescue and bomb squads were called down and they agreed there may be a possibility of live ammunition,” Lake Illawarra Police Sergeant Peter Northey said.
“We’ve contacted the Australian Defence Force and the army turned out this morning (to remove the items safely).”
Hand grenades, some of which dated back to World War I, were packed in draws, while the rocket launcher had been hanging in plain view on a top floor wall for years.
Wollongong Heritage Collections president Terry Bugg and his wife Shirley have been the only two people inside the museum over the past two years, and were shocked to find they’d been handling and looking at potentially-explosive items every day.
“My first reaction was get them out of the place as quick as you can,” Mr Bugg said.
“If that (rocket launcher) went off it would have come straight through the wall and out the other side … That’s a bit frightening.”
Mr Bugg said some of the grenades came into the possession of the museum more than two decades ago, and had been sitting inside the building since then.
“Some of the grenades were picked up in the field in Belgium and France in WWI, some of them were from WWII and others were from the Vietnam era,” he said.
“We don’t want to lose the history but the public’s safety is far more important.”
Lake Illawarra Police Sergeant Gary Keevers said ADF personnel determined the artefacts wouldn’t have exploded on their own, however worried about what could have happened if they got into the wrong hands.
“There was no danger to the public,” he said.
The items were taken by the army by Thursday afternoon, and will either be destroyed or certified as inert at a cost to the museum.