THIRTY-NINE is an exciting number. It's not a prime (it's divisible by three and 13), and as a few internet sleuths have noted over the last couple of days, it's not quite 40. But let's not get conspiratorial.
Police have been piecing together how a black plastic bag stuffed with 39 individually wrapped bricks of suspected cocaine could have washed up near the Newcastle Ocean Baths on Boxing Day, adding to about 124 kilograms of similar stuff that has been turning up on the beaches between Sydney and Newcastle since around Christmas Eve.
