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Mystery explosion wakes Darwin residents amid storms

A mysterious explosion-like sound boomed across Darwin this morning, waking residents.

The noise came after lightning lashed the city on Wednesday night, with wind gusts reaching 65 kilometres per hour in the early morning.

The strange noise baffled locals, who took to social media looking for answers.

“So what was the big bangs this morning at 6.45, did Inpex blow up?” one Facebook user said.

“It was more like 4.45 and I think that was just the storm to end all storms!” another user wrote.

“These bangs weren’t thunder. It was about 6.45-7 and around 8 of them evenly spaced,” one Facebook user said.

“Dull booms that could be heard everywhere.”

Lightning over Darwin on Wednesday night
Lightning over Darwin on Wednesday night. Source: Facebook/Jason Colless

The unusual boom came from a military training exercise at Robertson Barracks, 15 minutes east of Darwin’s CBD.

This type of exercise is conducted “regularly” and uses explosives to simulate battle sound, Kris Gardiner, Australian Army Public Affairs Officer at Robertson Barracks told Yahoo7.

“We had combat engineers conducting small underwater training exercise with their divers in the training units adjacent to the barracks here in Darwin,” Mr Gardiner said.

“Part of that was simulating battle noise.”

“They do that by using small amounts of explosives.”

He explained that normally, the sound doesn’t travel far but prevailing weather conditions caused the sound to reverberate.

A loud boom was heard in Darwin on Thursday morning
A loud boom was heard in Darwin on Thursday morning. Source: Facebook/Jason Colless

“Because of the weather conditions this morning with the thick, low-level cloud, the booms or the explosions actually caused the sound to bounce and behave in the same manner or under the same physics that thunder does when it rolls.”

Mr Gardiner confirmed that there were no injuries in the routine exercise.