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“As to the reason; who knows why, how or when — we don’t know,” Sgt Davis said.
“We don’t know how long he’d been driving around with it.”
Officer John Arnold, in charge of catching dogs and enforcing other by-laws, had been driving the vehicle for most of the day.
He first saw wires hanging from underneath the white caged wagon when it was parked in the driveway of his home in Shawbrook Avenue, off the Benalla-Tatong Road in south-eastern Benalla.
Sgt Davis said Mr Arnold had an explosive licence so was able to quickly identify the material.
“He knows what it is,” Sgt Davis said.
“He has moved it to a different position of the vehicle and moved the council vehicle with the explosive device to the very end of Shawbrook Avenue; far away from houses.
“While that’s all very well for him to do that; there’s still a lot of houses here.”
Mr Arnold left the vehicle and called police who evacuated Shawbrook Avenue and Plover Place.
About 40 staff from council offices, at the Benalla Civic Centre on Fawkner Drive, were also evacuated just after 3.30pm.
Police searched all other council cars and offices and declared the area safe at about 4.30pm.
Benalla Mayor Pat Claridge was left stunned by the incident.
“It’s very, very unusual — we hope it is an isolated incident,” she said.
“I don’t know of any incidents like this previously.
“Our local laws officers have very tough jobs but they’re all very personable people.”
Residents were allowed to return to their homes at about 10pm, while the special operations group continued to work overnight.
They had stood in the streets waiting for the all clear.
“They just came around to the house and said, ‘There’s a bomb under a car; you’ve got to get out,” resident Geoff Goodman said.
“You just don’t expect it, that’s all — obviously someone’s been upset by something.”
Across the road, resident Stuart Green, also a CFA volunteer, was paged about the incident.
“My pager went off and it said, ‘dynamite under a car on Shawbrook’, and I went, ‘whoa’,” he said.
“I’ll be having a look under my car the next time I get in it.”
Residents Malcolm and Sharon Deakin said such an incident was very unusual for ‘boring Benalla’.
The last time they were evacuated was amid floods in 1993.