It was a typical Saturday night in Bali and the Kuta Beach tourist strip was heaving with people.
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Locals and foreigners — including many Australians — waded through the main street of Jalan Legian, leaving crowded restaurants and pouring into bustling bars.
A steady line of cars passed by, offering passengers a glimpse into Bali's party scene from the safety of their tinted windows.
It was October 12, 2002, and the night was just getting started.
Warning: This article contains graphic accounts of the Bali bombings and the immediate aftermath of the scene in Kuta Beach, including descriptions of injured people and the dead.
No-one would expect that hours later, about 11pm, a bomb would explode inside the popular Paddy's Irish Pub.
Or that mere moments later, a second, bigger bomb would go off in a van across the road, outside the Sari Club.
Or that a third bomb would detonate about 45 seconds later near the US consulate.
In this oral history, we hear from Australian and Balinese survivors, former and current Australian Federal Police officers, a journalist and a terrorism expert.
Together, they weave together the story of the Bali bombings, the single-largest loss of Australian life in an act of terror.
(All interviews have been condensed and edited for clarity.)
A night out
Locals and tourists, particularly Australian sporting teams celebrating their end-of-season break, had flocked to Kuta Beach that day to enjoy the warm weather, idyllic beaches and vibrant party scene.
ALAN ATKINSON, former ABC journalist and one of the first reporters on the scene: It was Saturday evening. It was very colourful and noisy and warm in Kuta. We'd eaten at the nightclubs, near the famous Poppies lane, and then we walked along Kuta beach at sunset back to our hotel.
ERIK DE HAART, Australia survivor and member of the Coogee Dolphins rugby league club: I was sharing a room with Shane Foley and Gerard Yeo and we got [to the hotel] about 4pm. We had a quick swim, got ready, went to a place for dinner and then made our way to the Sari Club.
GLEN MCEWAN, AFP senior liaison officer deployed in Indonesia in 2002: I flew into Bali [that] afternoon due to a people-smuggling matter that I had to attend to as part of my duties. [My colleague] Mick [Keelty] was already in Bali. Two [other AFP] officers had arrived [that day] and Mick and I met with them in the early evening.
Normally, we would have gone down to Paddy's Bar there … but the two officers had only just stepped off the plane, so they didn't want to. They were lazy, in my view, but that probably saved their life.
So we [went to] a restaurant bar about 400 metres [away], just at the top end of Jalan Legian.
THIOLINA F MARAPAUNG, Indonesian survivor and head of the Bali Bombing Victims' Association, Isana Dewata Foundation: My two friends suggested [we] drive past [Jalan] Legian because it was Saturday night [and we wanted] to check out how Kuta was during night time.
Once we entered [the] street, the traffic was really jammed from the start, so the car was moving very slowly.
ANDREW CSABI, Australian survivor: At 10:30pm, we decided to go into the Sari Club. [It] was packed with people and security at the front gates, just as normal.
I met up with Jodie Cearns … I didn't know she'd come back from Europe. We laughed and hugged and I said 'I'm gonna grab a drink and then I'll come down and see you at the front there'. And that was it. I never saw her again.
DEWA KETUT RUDITAWIDYA PUTRA (nickname Deci), Indonesian survivor: We were stuck [in a car] in a traffic jam and our position was right in front of the Sari Club's door. There were a lot of people on the street. Many foreign tourists were chatting.
DE HAART: We were just getting ready to create havoc, when havoc was created for us.
The lights went out
Two bombs went off in Jalan Legian shortly after 11pm. One was detonated by a suicide bomber inside Paddy's Bar and seconds later, another bomb was set off in a car outside the Sari Club.
DECI: People were clapping because they thought there was a party in Paddy's. Suddenly the lights went off. It was dark. A few seconds later, a massive explosion happened. At the time, I was in a daze. I could feel the car lift up off the ground. Then I was out.
CSABI: It's like one of those large, six-foot gas cylinders blowing up right next to you, exploding. I had this massive hard thump in my chest and I was just knocked out instantly.
I can only imagine I was thrown quite a few metres because when I woke up, I didn't think I was in the same place when that bomb went off. The experience I had was a split-second one, a microsecond.
I can remember the filthy stench of chloride and a napalm smell. It was horrible. I've never smelled that before.
DE HAART: I was in a music store [making my way down Poppies Lane after helping a friend get home] and all of a sudden there was a dull thud, the lights flickered and went out.
I raced outside — as did everyone who was in the club — to see what was going on. I thought a gas canister or something had exploded. You're in Bali, you don't think it's going to be a terrorist or even a bomb.
And the sky was lit up with this big orange glow, which is strange because all the lights are out. And then I thought 'oh shit, that looks like it's near the Sari Club.'
'Ground Zero'
The two bombs gutted nearby buildings, engulfing the street in flames and leaving a 1-metre-deep crater in front of the Sari Club.
MCEWAN: [From the restaurant] we saw an inferno in the distance. It was towards Jalan Legian but … the inferno was that broad we thought it could have been our hotel [near Kuta Beach].
… We went to investigate [the hotel first] and then worked our way towards what ended up being 'Ground Zero'.
DE HAART: I started making my way down Poppies Lane and, as I got closer to the front, there were people running, getting away from the flames.
The first lot just had their clothes on. The second lot were bleeding and had their clothes blown off them. And then as I got closer, the sights got worse.
I turned around the corner. And, on the right-hand side, Paddy's Bar was in flames. People [were] staggering out of that. I looked to the left where the Sari Club was, and it was just absolute chaos.
CSABI: I can't understand what goes through your mind there except when I woke up, I was just looking down.
My left leg, it was at right angles, and my right foot, my toes were missing. So I did the only thing I could do and that was to crawl away from the heat. The whole nightclub was engulfed in flames.
MCEWAN: As we were running up Poppies Lane, people were running towards us and away from what they had already experienced. We're talking not a short amount of time after the blast.
Then when we entered onto the Jalan Legian, right outside Paddy's Bar, there was hundreds of people … Just chaos. You can imagine whatever hell is like, it must be something like that.
DE HAART: People wandering around, people in a state of shock.
There were people bleeding everywhere, or people had their clothes blown off and they're trying to jump over walls to get out.
There was just bodies lying around on the ground … People are staggering … helping other people stagger out.
CSABI: I've gone unconscious a couple of times and I'm crawling and I remember girls next to me, they were just like flame trees, they're on fire. I'm trying to wave people forward and I didn't even know whether I was crawling in a safe direction.
But my instincts — fight or flight — kicked in and I just started crawling and then I crawled to the front of the club. I was informed that might have been six or seven [minutes] after the blast. Quite a few people had got out.
Then I'd gone and fallen into that crater in the front and that's when an off duty soldier, Anthony McKay, came to my aid. I refer to him as my first angel of the night.
DE HAART: I guess I was in a state of shock and this guy came up and he shoved a girl in my arms and said 'look after her' and he turned around and went back into the Sari Club. And that kind of galvanised me.
I saw two girls beside the road and said: 'Please look after this girl, I don't know who she is, but she obviously needs help'. And I turned around and followed him back into the Sari Club.
Angels walking through 'hell'
Many have praised the acts of heroism displayed by strangers on the night of October 12. Locals and foreigners worked tirelessly to save victims of the bombing, digging through rubble, offering aid and providing life-saving rides to hospitals.
ATKINSON: I was woken in the early hours by a night-owl relative in Sydney, who rang and he said there'd been some kind of explosion [in Bali] and were we all right? So I dragged myself out knowing I had to get to work.
I grabbed notebooks and pens and phone and water. I told the family I'd be in touch and I [left].
THIOLINA: I'm not sure how long I [was] passed out. I couldn't see — I could only see one dot of light in the distance. I didn't know what happened to my face, to my body, but I tried to call for help. 'Help, help.' I tried to open the car door on the left side, but I couldn't do it — I kept trying.
DECI: When I woke up my position was under the car's dashboard. My left arm was stuck in the car's door. The car was in flames. [My friends] Lina and Gatot were no longer in the car. I tried to get out … but couldn't open the left door. … The door on the driver's seat was open, so I got out from there.
Outside it was all fire. I couldn't really see, my body was covered in blood. I tried to keep calm and made my way to escape the fire.
MCEWAN: The way Jalan Legian is set up, [it's] a one-way street. So emergency service and vehicles couldn't enter that area. The only way you could help the injured was to put [them] on motorcycles for good Samaritans, who were taking them out.
DE HAART: I just grabbed anyone I could see in front of me and [helped] them out. I couldn't tell you if they are male or female, child or whatever. I wasn't looking at who they were, I just saw human beings that needed help. And I just did whatever I could.
CSABI: [I was] put on a sheet of corrugated iron and four [people] carried me down Poppies [Lane]. [At some point] I said 'I need some tourniquets, I'm bleeding out here'. And they [applied tourniquets] … I'd looked down at [my] leg and I looked at my foot. I just started recognising the severity of it. I just knew I was in trouble.
I grew up in a Catholic family and I crossed myself. I'd sort of issued myself last rites, said a prayer. Then this lady took my details, I just said 'I'm right, you can help someone else'. I just thought that that was going to be the end for me.
THIOLINA: Suddenly, I felt there was a really big hand taking me out of the car — I'm not sure where I was taken out from, whether from the car's door or the window. That hand took me out and put me down.
I couldn't see anything, so I could only feel with my hands. I felt that I was on the pavement. Then, according to people, I ran away from the site. I kept calling out for help.
DECI: There was a woman helping me, telling me to come and that she'll call an ambulance. She sat me there, gave me water. She was trying to find me a vehicle to take me to the hospital.
THIOLINA: Suddenly, I met somebody who led me to his car, I don't know who this person is [but] he told me to get in the car … He asked who my name was in English. I gave him my mum's number. My mum couldn't believe I was there that night. That man took me to a hospital in Kuta.
DE HAART: At one stage as I got deeper into the club, I saw — well, I didn't see — but the roof had fallen down and there were three girls who had been trapped in a corner by a burning thatched roof. And they were screaming out for help.
I looked at them and I think 'well, I've got to walk across this roof, about 20 feet of thatched roof, in flames'. Now, I'm about 120 kilos. I thought 'there's no way in the world I can get across this once, let alone go over and cross three times and carry a girl back each time'.
So I had to walk away from those girls and leave them to die. My head's telling me I'm doing the right thing, but my heart is giving it to me saying 'oh, you're a coward' … I'm still struggling to live with that decision 20 years [on].
Inside the 'war zone'
The local Sanglah Hospital was quickly overwhelmed with the number of victims. Some were later flown to Australia for surgery or for help with specialist burn treatment.
ATKINSON: Sanglah Hospital was like a war zone. The rooms were full of patients, the staff [were] completely overworked, people had horrific injuries and burns, many of whom would probably die.
DECI: When we got [to Sanglah Hospital], it was already so crowded, victims were everywhere. I didn't receive help right away … Finally a nurse brought me a wheelchair and told me to sit [and] she wheeled me inside. Once I was inside I had to wait still because it was still crowded. I remember all I could do was hold my arm — blood kept gushing out.
… Once they pulled me out of the wheel chair I don't remember anything else. I woke up and saw my mum next to me and she told me I had been unconscious for three days. And my condition was not good.
ATKINSON: Outside [the hospital], ambulances and trucks were arriving all the time, bringing more bodies. Balinese boys were hanging off the tree branches to one side, watching.
CSABI: I remember being put in the back of a ute and I'd been on a sheet of iron. And then I'd been informed … we were being taken to Sanglah Hospital. I remember them trying to keep us cool and trying to attend to our wounds and I had my first amputation in Bali on that left leg above my ankle and on my right foot, on my toes.
… Then I was on a stretcher on a tarmac there in Denpasar, and we're on a Hercules jet bound for Darwin.
THIOLINA: After [being turned away from one hospital] an ambulance took me to the army hospital in Denpasar. [When I got] to the army hospital I could hear the noise of a lot of people. I heard someone say that her eye lens are broken and they must be operated on tonight. … I heard it was so hard to … get IV drips. I had surgery that night.
ATKINSON: [At the hospital] I asked who was in charge and the doctor came forward with a huge clipboard, who'd been up all night and was white with tiredness … He showed me the names — many Australian names and addresses. I started writing furiously.
I asked him if he knew how many would be dead, not expecting him to know, and he just said 181 and one at another hospital, so 182 so far.
The hunt for answers
The bombings were an act of terrorism carried out by operatives from Jemaah Islamiah (JI), a South-East Asian group inspired by and linked to Al Qaeda. The militant organisation is believed to have started planning the bombing some 10 months earlier after ordering a new strategy of hitting soft targets, such as nightclubs and bars.
SHANE HAMMING, an explosives specialist with the AFP's Australian bomb data centre who was sent to Bali: I first heard about [the bombing] on the news on the Sunday, I think. It was [an] obviously shocking series of events unfolding. The media footage was dramatic and horrible.
SIDNEY JONES, an expert on security in South-East Asia and founder and senior adviser to the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict: I think [the people behind the attacks] hoped to literally cause fear. It was more than anything else, the desire to show Westerners that no-one was safe anywhere.
NATHAN GREEN, a crime scene investigator with the AFP who was first based in Australia and then deployed to Bali after his honeymoon: There [were] two simultaneous investigations. It's important to realise that neither of these were AFP jurisdiction. Indonesian National Police had full jurisdiction over this matter.
But we were running concurrently, what was effectively a murder investigation [of] a terrorist bombing that killed 202 people, including the 88 Australians [and] at the same time, we were running a disaster victim identification [investigation of] those 202 people.
MCEWAN: Over time, we had different police disciplines [in Bali]. Out of that 100-plus police force that arrived from Australia, it was every spectrum of policing discipline. So you had your forensics, you had your investigators — the list went on —family liaison officers. All these [units] came together.
GREEN: This was an unprecedented event in any Australian law enforcement. A lot of the state jurisdictions have experience in smaller disaster victim identification investigations, but no-one had ever done anything of this sort of scale. So we were rotating people through there to upskill, but also to minimise the impact on the workforce.
It's quite a challenging thing to do. It's confronting. I was quite young, I was 25 at the time. I had been exposed to dead people before as part of my duty, but never more than sort of two or three [at] a time. So to see that sort of destruction was on another level.
MCEWAN: Initially, you had people trying to identify loved ones. But trying to explain [the inability to positively identify someone] to a victim's family, who are just caught up in the whole emotion, which you can fully understand, it was quite a task.
GREEN: On my first rotation over there, I was assisting on the criminal side of the investigation. All of my subsequent deployments were on the disaster victim identification side.
So I [was] attached to what was called the reconciliation team [which] looks at … data and tries to identify the dead and that includes DNA and fingerprints and the traditional sort of forensic methodologies as well.
HAMMING: From an explosives perspective, we were really keen to see both the Sari Club and the Paddy's Bar scene.
We were very keen to observe the area surrounding the scene, at some distance, because the way explosives work, they have a very characteristic signature of damage.
And that will help you determine what the likely category of explosives were.
[For example], a very high-power, say, military explosive or a lower-grade commercial explosive or a homemade explosive.
So we believe, and I still hold that, of the 1,000 or so kilograms of explosives [used], around 500kg or thereabouts, actually detonated. The remainder of the explosive material, in my opinion, definitely degraded violently. Hence, why we saw such a big fireball, such a big incendiary effect and why there was just such a horrendous type of injury.
GREEN: This was the largest bombing I've ever attended, even today … It was huge. To know that 202 people died in a single location was definitely sobering.
HAMMING: It wasn't a commercial explosive that was manufactured under strict manufacturing protocols and it certainly wasn't a military explosive that's manufactured to very strict protocols, and tested rigorously.
It was a homemade explosive that was mixed by people, who quite frankly, had no idea what they were doing. They were given some instructions on how to mix the components of the explosive and they did the best they could, I guess. But ultimately, it perhaps wasn't as good as it could have been.
And likewise, when they were following the instructions on how to build the bomb in the van, how to put the explosives in, how to connect the initiation system and how to construct the back of the van, the way it was constructed was not ideal, I guess, is the best word I'm prepared to use.
GREEN: It was fairly well-established pretty soon after the detonation itself, who the suspects were. I wasn't involved in that part of it, but I know a lot of my colleagues that I've spoken to during the investigation — and since — were travelling to all different parts of Indonesia at the time to suspected bomb-making or actual bomb-making factories.
HAMMING: All [the] information that comes through from investigations, and witnesses and so on, becomes critical to start refining the hypothesis and ultimately it became clear that they were, in fact, suicide bombs. There were people — the person in a van and a person [who] carried the device in Paddy’s Bar wearing the item.
JONES: Almost everyone involved in the Bali bombings in 2002 [were eventually] linked to the branch of Jemaah islamiah [JI] that was based in Malaysia, not in Indonesia. Jemaah Islamiah was a splinter group of an old Indonesian insurgency that was committed to establishing an Islamic State in Indonesia.
Face to face with the bombmaker
After compiling evidence on the design of the bombs, a group of AFP investigators were sent to Kerobokan prison to interview one of the bomb makers about its construction.
GREEN: I was simply going along to video and audio record the interview itself. So I was there as an observer.
But I can tell you at 25 years old, sitting three or four feet away from one of the Bali bombers — there's a couple of them, but there was one at the time — hearing them talk quite normally about their role in the investigation or their points on our design of the bomb and how we thought it had functioned was one of the most surreal things I've ever experienced.
I can still picture that day. Picture exactly where I was standing in the prison courtyard, the table where the bombers were. And they were just interacting and sort of trying to joke around [in] the way most of the other Indonesians I had interacted with at that time [did]. They were friendly, approachable, people.
Personally, I was angry that these people that we were talking to were the alleged perpetrators of this terrible, terrible crime. But I still remember what struck me is they were just so normal.
They didn't look evil, they didn't have shark-like eyes. They smiled, they laughed, they were just normal people. That I found, I think, at the time, difficult to deal with.
I don't know why you would expect them to look different from a normal human. But for someone to have been involved in something of that nature, against innocent people [who] were just there on holidays and enjoying a good time, for them to just look like anyone else that I'd walk past in Bali, it was really challenging to deal with.
[After the meeting] I remember all of us, the forensic team, the investigations team, the bomb data-centre specialists that were over there, there was a lot of quiet pride, I guess. The way that the device was put to the suspects, the way that we thought the device had been constructed, was almost perfect.
So I guess it was a vindication of the investigation and the intelligence effort that had gone in that far into the investigation that we've actually got it right.
By looking at understanding how the circuitry was designed, or what trigger mechanism was used, or even what explosive mixture was [used, it] can give us a really strong intelligence as to the training and understanding of who might have actually trained them.
And then, therefore, that can lead to what group was ultimately responsible, what terrorist group was responsible for the bomb itself.
JONES: [The terrorists] were more inspired by two things [in the Bali bombing attack]. [First] the 1998 fatwa from Al-Qaeda, which itself might have inspired the 9/11 attacks, but which called on all Muslims to attack the Christian Zionist alliance, wherever and however they could.
And it was that fatwa from Al-Qaeda that was instrumental in inspiring violence from groups in many different places but including among a faction of JI led by Hambali.
The second factor that inspired the Bali bombing, which is also critical, is the communal violence that erupted in Indonesia, in Ambon in the Moluccas, and in Poso in central Sulawesi, in 1999 and 2000, where there was Christian, Muslim fighting, and Muslims were dying at Christian hands.
What that meant was that Muslims, who were involved in the combat in those two places, which included members of JI, could take that 1998 fatwa from Al-Qaeda, and say, 'this is happening in Indonesia too, Muslims from the Christian Zionist alliance are being killed by this larger group'.
So it enables the translation of the global jihad to a local context. And that was the reason that, for the first time, you had JI become involved in violence on Indonesian soil in a way that hadn't happened from the birth of JI until the eruption of violence in Ambon in 1999.
Twenty years on
In 2008, three men were executed for their role in the Bali bombings. Others involved in planning or carrying out the plot have been sentenced to time in prison or have died in the years since the bombing.
JONES: You don't eradicate terrorist groups completely. There will always be small, independent cells — some of whom are not particularly well informed — that continue to believe that they have a mission.
ATKINSON: I just hope they can protect what's special about Bali, which is that it is so different from the rest of Indonesia. It has different religious traditions, a whole range of different traditions [and] the people are different.
… There's an outward-going lovingness from the Balinese people that everyone who's met them appreciates.
DE HAART: There's no such thing as closure. People don't get closure. Being a survivor for me is a life sentence … Every time the families get together there's a hole where their sons were or their daughters were or their husbands … and then in the last 20 years, there's been so much that's happened … So it's difficult to move on. It's difficult to get past it all.
DECI: My family and friends didn't leave me and they would help me with my weaknesses, especially in the beginning, I really shut myself off from the world. I never did any interviews with journalists, I never wanted to.
This is the first time I [have done] an interview. So I have to start having the courage to speak up.
CSABI: In Darwin, with the support of my family, also friends, rotarians, businesspeople, I was also challenged to show some courage and have a go. I had some counselling sessions up there and it did make sense that what had happened to me was a tragic thing, but it's something that I could rebuild on. So I did take that on board.
It was funny because I always say that your positive attitude attracts positive results and it worked for me. I started getting healthier, fitter. I did my rehab in Darwin, so eight and a half weeks in Darwin, being the last Australian to get out of that Darwin hospital.
… I don't have any malice and anger, I can't let it into my life, because while I'm trying to do that, [being] angry and resentful, I'm not healing. So very early, I decided that I wasn't going to entertain those ideas of a lot of revenge [and] hatred. I'm not a racist in any shape or form.
… I'm acutely aware of my surroundings, I don't feel the same when I'm in airports, and don't feel as secure on public transport a lot. But I'm getting my life back. I've got my life back. And I'm able to really enjoy my life and I'm making every minute count.
THIOLINA: I had kept the piece of broken glass the doctor took out from my eye. Every time I opened the wardrobe I would cry. I told the psychologist everything.
I kept everything, all the articles. I thought it was good to keep them as documents of the history of my life.
But [the psychologist] said to get rid of it all — all the bad mementos from my history so I can live a healthier life. So I threw that piece of glass at Kuta Beach and the articles that my friends sent me, I burnt them all. All the pictures too I burnt them all.
And thank god, it was true, I felt healthier. And what's incredible is [I no longer fear] traffic jams.
DE HAART: One thing that does stand out to me is that so many people, so many Australians really stood up that day, even that night. You see photos of people walking out, staggering out carrying people.
There were people at the hospital, they were buying water and giving people water and they had no medicines left, so they were tipping water over people's wounds.
Doctor Billy McNeil stood up for 72 hours and just helped people try and look after their wounds, try and keep them alive.
Ladies that organised the hospital because you know, a lot of the Indonesians couldn't speak English or couldn't speak any other languages … I guess I'd probably love nothing better than to see some of these people recognised for the magnificent jobs that they did that night [and] the next day.
Read the story in Bahasa Indonesia
Credits
Reporter: Lucia Stein and Anne Barker
Photographer: Phil Hemingway
Editor: Lucia Stein
Additional photography courtesy of Reuters, AP and Facebook
