REMEMBER WHEN

GOLD COAST BULLETIN Thursday, December 17, 1987

POLICE warned children against experimenting with domestic chemicals and cleaners after two Nerang boys were injured when a homemade bomb exploded.

Gold Coast police Superintendent Don Teague said the incident, involving an 11-yearold boy and a 13-year-old boy was not reported to police.

Supt Teague said mixing some domestic ingredients to make explosives was against the law “depending on what they are”.

“I certainly warn people against mucking around with anything that might be a dangerous substance,” he said.

“It is terribly dangerous and we advise against doing anything involving explosives.”

His warning followed the impassioned plea of a Nerang grandmother to parents and children to think wisely about school holiday activities after her grandsons were seriously injured by a homemade bomb.

Apparently the boys were making the explosive to blow up some fish.

The older boy had a large piece of glass lodged in the back of his throat and was in a serious condition in the intensive care war at Brisbane’s Prince Charles Hospital.

Grandmother Hope St John, who did not wish to name her grandsons, said: “It could be months before he’s back to normal,” she said.

She said the two boys had made the bomb in a glass bottle at the back of their Nerang home a week earlier.

“It went off before they thought it would,” she said.

“The younger boy was cut about the face but he’s out of hospital now.”

Mrs St John said the boys had learned about bombs from a friend at Nerang High.