The former ABC Indonesia correspondent Tim Palmer says the sight of dozens of tiny bodies lined up was the most heart-rending scene he witnessed in the aftermath of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.
“Family after family had their children sucked from their grasp; they were actually holding them and holding a tree at the same time and were still not able to save their infant child,” Palmer says.
“That was devastating. The worst pictures for me were the ones of how tiny the little sarong-wrapped bodies were, lying in a mosque all lined up. They’d lay them out sort of by age, a line of kids that were under four.”
Palmer, accompanied by the Indonesian producer Ari Wuryantama, was the first western journalist to reach the severely damaged region of Aceh in Indonesia, close to the epicentre of the tsunami. He says the scale of the horror and the loss and shock of the people was overwhelming.
“When we arrived in Aceh we were uncertain of what we were going to find,” he says.
Unable to secure a camera operator in the rush to leave Jakarta, the ABC crew of two hired a car and packed it full of water, food, a generator and satellite equipment and drove across the border.
“It was pitch-black when we arrived, we were falling over bodies, falling into the mud, tripping over people and seeing people just hanging from cars above us,” Palmer says. “And then we got back to our own car to find that there were people under the car as well.”
The ABC was the first broadcaster to get pictures out of Aceh. It was a near-impossible task because the satellite towers were ruined. Palmer, an experienced Middle East correspondent who had covered the war in Afghanistan, came prepared for all conditions.
“I took everything so we could run our entire operation on car batteries,” he says.
For five days Palmer, assisted by Wuryantama, filmed his own stories and spoke to survivors, all while dealing with the gruesome sight of bodies in various stages of decomposition and the logistical challenges of reaching affected areas. He says he was fortunate to have been a boy scout because he had the skills to fashion makeshift bridges to navigate flooded landscapes.
“I’m really proud of the fact that we went to Aceh,” Palmer says. “And as a result of us going for five days to the worst spot, in the worst natural disaster of the century, we were able to provide direct satellite news … before anyone else could.”
A cameraman, David Anderson, joined the pair on the fourth day. The trio decided to try to get to Leupung, a series of six villages at the very tip of Aceh.
“One man told me that he thought fewer than 5% of the people had survived from a population of 10,000,” Palmer says.
“In fact, it turned out to be less. It turned out that out of 10,000 people, around maybe 300 or 400 survived, which is a casualty rate of 96%.”
Palmer won multiple awards for his reporting from Indonesia, which took in the Nias Island helicopter crash, the Jakarta embassy bombing and the Bali bombings as well as the tsunami. But he paid a heavy price in terms of his mental and physical health as he traipsed from one disaster to the next.
“While we’re doing it – I think most reporters would say this sort of thing – while the adrenaline is there, it’s sort of easy,” he says. “You’re driven by the adrenaline of the situation around you and being driven by making the deadlines under technical constraints. But when that goes, the fatigue sets in and you have to process it all.”
