A few packs of Malaysian top-notch Musang King and D24 durians being delivered to a lab in Sydney, Australia, have caused a stir after an agricultural team of Malaysia’s Sydney consulate examined the delivery and nearby office staff mistook the distinctive smell of the fruits for a gas leak.
In an office in downtown Sydney, the strong, pungent smell of the durians went into the ventilation system and reached adjoining offices, whose staff started panicking and set off a gas leak alert. Emergency teams arrived and evacuated the whole floor "within minutes", reports said on September 7.
The Malaysian consulate explained to the emergency staff that the smell in fact was from the durians and it was harmless, and said the officers were left "amazed and puzzled."
Even hours after everything was clarified, newly arriving office staff still became suspicious about the prevailing scent.
To avoid further misunterstandings, the consulate decided to move any operations connected to durians to the Malaysia Hall in Sydney, a students’ accommodation for Malaysian exchange students, where the durian smell "is very well received," as Malaysia’s Sydney Consulate agriculture director Muhammad Rudy Khairudin Mohd Nor put it.
"Who would have thought that exporting durians to Australia could be so challenging?" he said.
by Arno Maierbrugger