From December to today, more than 250 kilos have been found, divided into packages of different sizes
On Monday, five packages of cocaine worth an estimated one million Australian dollars (more or less 600 thousand euros) were found on two beaches north of Sydney, Australia’s largest city. Police in New South Wales – the Australian state that includes Sydney – said they were part of a larger shipment, split into different sized packages, that arrived in Australia at least three months ago.
The first package was found last December 22nd on Magenta Beach, north-east of Sydney: since then more than 250 kilos of cocaine have been found on a dozen Australian beaches, spanning a stretch of more or less 500 kilometres. The two largest packages, each containing around 39 kilos of cocaine, were found in Sydney and Newcastle on 26 December.
In January at Bondi Beach, the famous beach less than ten kilometers from the center of Sydney, a lifeguard filmed himself collecting a package containing a kilo of cocaine from the sea.
It is unclear how the packages ended up in the sea. In January, Australian police told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Australia’s public broadcaster, that the cocaine may have come from South America, and may have arrived in Australia on a cargo ship.
On all the packages found so far there were labels with the words Tesla, Zoe and RZ. Some of the packages found were lined with barnacles (marine crustaceans), and police say they may have been in the water for six weeks before being discovered. According to the OECD, Australians are the largest per capita consumers of cocaine in the world, followed by the inhabitants of the United Kingdom.
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