Police have discovered 2.7 metric tons of cocaine at a property on the outskirts of Sydney, marking the largest single seizure of the drug ever recorded in Australia, authorities announced today.
The illicit cargo was uncovered on June 19 inside plastic containers buried in underground bunkers hidden beneath three shipping containers on a semi-rural property in the western Sydney suburb of Londonderry, the Queensland Joint Organised Crime Taskforce stated.
The shipping containers featured false floors that provided access to the concealed cocaine, which police estimate has a street value of 816 million Australian dollars (€499 million). Two Sydney residents, aged 21 and 25, were arrested at the property and charged with possession of a commercial quantity of a border-controlled drug. If convicted, they face a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
Australia’s previous record cocaine bust stood at 2.34 metric tons, which was confiscated in 2024 from a fishing boat near K’gari (formerly known as Fraser Island) off the coast of Queensland.
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Police revealed that the cocaine found in Sydney—the capital of New South Wales and Australia’s most populous city—was originally brought ashore by boat at Midge Point, a sparsely populated tropical area in Queensland. Law enforcement agencies state that a Sydney-based organized crime syndicate then transported the drugs over land to the city, covering a distance of 1,800 kilometers.
Investigators suspect this shipment was offloaded from the same mother ship tied to a previous seizure of 178 kilograms of cocaine in Queensland. Six people have already been charged in connection with that specific cache, as well as 142 kilograms of methamphetamine uncovered during the ongoing investigation.
The suspected mother ship is the Wealth, a Belize-flagged cargo vessel that was detained by authorities in the Solomon Islands under suspicion of involvement in transnational organized crime. The Solomon Islands sit roughly 2,000 kilometers northeast of Queensland.
Australian Federal Police Commander Stephen Jay noted that organized crime groups are increasingly targeting Queensland’s 13,000-kilometer coastline to smuggle narcotics into the country.
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Global Drug Trends Note: Australians pay some of the highest prices in the world for cocaine, making the country an exceptionally lucrative market for international drug cartels.
According to a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report published in June 2025, Australia and New Zealand have the highest per capita consumption of cocaine in the world. The UN agency warned at the time that Pacific island nations are being heavily exploited as transit hubs for cocaine shipments bound for Australia and New Zealand, where the UN estimates that 3% of people aged 15 to 64 used cocaine in 2023.
