Man loaded live bomb on truck for 'show and tell' before police confiscated and destroyed it

A mud crab fisherman in Australia's Northern Territory who stumbled upon a live World War II (WWII) bomb in bushland loaded it onto the back of his truck and toured it around town for "a bit of show and tell" before the device was confiscated by police and detonated.



Damien Lumsden said he discovered the unexploded ordnance under the wreckage of a WWII Australian plane at Milingimbi, 440 kilometres east of Darwin, in bushland shredded by cyclones Lam and Nathan which passed over in February and March respectively. "We were just doing a bit of a clean up after the cyclone," he said. "It's a mud crabbing track we've wanted to clear," he said. "We've come through and noticed something shiny and seen it sitting there." Mr Lumsden said the find was "pretty exciting".



He said the bomb was "put it in the back of the ute for a couple of days". "We drove around town ... doing a bit of show and tell." However, word of the discovery soon got around the small community. "A couple of people got the gist and starting ringing up," he said. "Ben and Paddy (police officers from Ramingining, about 20 kilometres away) came over and took it away from me." Mr Lumsden said he had hoped to keep the bomb as a souvenir. "It would have been good to keep on the mantlepiece," he said.



Mr Lumsden said the local council was unimpressed. "They weren't too happy," he said. On Tuesday, members of the Australian Army and RAAF bomb squad cleared a one kilometre radius at an uninhabited area to safely detonate the device, which had laid dormant for more than 70 years. NT Police warned explosives that appear inactive could be deadly and should not be touched or moved. Discoveries of bombs from the 1939-1945 conflict are common across the Top End which came under Japanese attack more than 60 times during WWII.

There's a short video of the bomb being destroyed here.