It would appear as though that grenade was defused before it was brought home, probably as some kind of souvenir or collector’s item, only to be left in a shed and forgotten about.

The man who found the “explosives” tin should be commended for calling police instead of trying to handle a potentially deadly weapon himself. 

Last year, a similar grenade shut down a section of Griffith’s main street for close to a day after it was found sitting in the middle of the road. That grenade was also found to be inert, but the risk caused significant problems for businesses inside an exclusion zone set up by police just before 9am. 

As for how it came to be in the middle of the street? A man had been clearing out a relative’s shed and was carting it away in a trailer, which it fell out of when he stopped for a coffee.

Cleaning out a shed… sound familiar?

You can hardly blame the people who brought these things back home from war for wanting a memento of their time in active service. But when they’re forgotten they become a hazard to their offspring and a major inconvenience to everyone else.

This all comes at a time when another relic of war threatens peoples’ lives. For more than 60 years, the government of North Korea has been in a tense standoff with the western world and, just like our grenades, there’s a real threat that needs to be defused once and for all.

On one side there’s a narcissistic demagogue, surrounded by rumours and intrigue, whose administration has seen the shock departure of a number of key figures. And on the other side there’s Kim Jong Un, the boy prince who would be king.

That the world is being brought closer and closer to nuclear war by two seemingly-unhinged individuals is incredibly worrying. But that our own government has thrown in with one of those sides is even more concerning as we’re potentially within range of North Korea’s missiles.

The sad part about all of this is that if there had been a truly concerted, genuine attempt at nuclear disarmament, if North Korea’s nuclear program had not been allowed to flourish, we wouldn’t be in this state.

Perhaps this is just another old shed that needs cleaning out.