Australia’s £30m cocaine mystery deepens as more bricks wash up on Sydney beaches

More than 250kg cocaine found along New South Wales coast since last December

Five plastic-wrapped packages that police suspect contain cocaine have washed up on beaches in Australia.

The packets, weighing 5kg in total and estimated to have a street value of £30m, were found by beachgoers at Freshwater and Curl Curl in Sydney.

The discovery deepens the mystery that has swirled since a cocaine brick was found on a beach in the Central Coast area, 90km north of Sydney, three days before Christmas last year. Two days later, six bricks covered in barnacles were found washed up between Newcastle and Sydney.

Since that first sighting in December, packages containing over 250kg of cocaine have been found along the New South Wales coast. In recent months, parcels containing drugs have been discovered washed ashore in Western Australia and Victoria too.

The Northern Beaches Police Area Command have confiscated the newly discovered packages for forensic analysis. The Marine Area Command, which looks into marine crimes, sent out patrols in the region but didn’t find any additional suspicious parcels, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

The New South Wales police urged the public to report any suspicious packages found along the beaches. “As inquiries continue, the public are reminded to report any suspicious package to authorities,” the police said in a statement.

The cocaine packages are believed to have arrived on cargo ships from South America. Australian police suspect that some packages may have been deliberately thrown into the ocean to be picked up elsewhere.

“Sometimes we do see where items are deliberately tossed into the ocean to be picked up by another vessel,” State Crime Command director Jason Weinstein was quoted as saying by BBC.

Analysis of barnacles on the packages indicated that they were in the water for no more than six weeks.

Detective superintendent Peter Faux noted that the packages discovered in recent months bore different labels, including Tesla, Zoe and R-Z.

Australians consume the most cocaine per capita of any nationality, as per an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) study published in 2023.

In July last year, two men from Canberra were arrested on charges of importing 247kg of cocaine concealed in a yacht’s hull. The yacht, arriving from Vanuatu in April and seized in Townsville, was found to hold drugs worth over $39m.

The previous month, three men had been arrested for trying to smuggle in 800kg of cocaine worth $210m.