Police called in to Gove airport bomb scare after museum mix up

A Gove man who had been using an unexploded World War II bomb as a bookend has discovered it might not have been as innocuous as he thought.

A building demolished by a Japanese bomb similar to the one in Dave Suter’s collection during the bombing of Darwin in 1942.

A GOVE man who had been using an unexploded World War II bomb as a bookend has discovered it might not have been as innocuous as he thought.

Dave Suter told ABC radio he planned to donate the shell to the former Royal Australian Air Force base and current airport’s military museum but hit a snag after he dropped it off.

“I’ve got a few of them from a property I had at Adelaide River in the late ‘80s, washed and cleaned and tidied — deemed innocuous at the time — and they sort of followed me around until my wife felt that these things that I liked as a bookshelf holder should not be in the house anymore,” he said.

“You’ve got to understand, all of these were empty of any stuff that could make them explode, so the issue that happened with us was that one of our members had spotted this, I hadn’t told them I’d dropped it off and he instigated the policy we have there that says ‘I don’t know anything about it, I better call the police’.

It was only then Mr Suter realised his display pieces might have retained some of the potential for which they were originally intended.

“Where there is a bit of a concern is there’s a little brass cap that came with them, there were several brass caps sitting around, and they are apparently the detonators and there could be concern that these detonators still have the potential to do something,” he said.

“Public safety’s always in our mind and of course the police have removed these items to a safe location and we are awaiting the bomb techs from Darwin who will visit in the next few weeks to have a bit of a look and then ascertain exactly what’s going on.”

Mr Suter said the likelihood of an explosion was minimal after the ordinance survived the trip from Adelaide River without incident.

“They were sitting in the trailer in the back, going down the road at a 80 or 90km/h on a bumpy road, so this came as a big surprise to me at the weekend,” he said.

Originally published as Police called in to Gove airport bomb scare after museum mix up