Australian Hanabeth Luke remembers like yesterday crawling through burning rubble and thick acrid black smoke after a bomb exploded at a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia, 20 years ago.
A total of 202 people, including 88 Australians, as well as Taiwanese Eve Kuo (郭惠敏), 24, and four members of a Taipei-based rugby club — Australian James Hardman, 28; Englishman Daniel Braden, 28; and Godfrey Fitz, 39, and Craig Harty, 35, both of South Africa — were killed when a car bomb exploded on Oct 12, 2002, outside the Sari Club and from another blast less than a minute earlier at Paddy’s Bar across the road.
It remains the single largest loss of life from an act of terror in Australian history. The country is today holding a memorial service for the victims at the parliament house in Canberra.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“We can’t bring those people back, but we can live the most, the best versions of our lives,” Luke said.
Luke, then 22 years old, escaped the burning building through the collapsed roof and scaled a 3m wall over electrical wires to jump to safety, frantically searching for her then-partner, Marc Gajado, amongst the chaos outside.
Gajado, who did not survive the blast, was walking toward the front of the building when the bomb exploded.
Photo: AFP
As she searched for Gajado, Luke came across badly injured 17-year-old Tom Singer, helping lift him to his feet.
“I said, mate I don’t care if both of your legs are broken, you’re going to get up and we’re going to use both of our strengths and get you out of here,” Luke said.
A photo of Luke helping the severely burnt Singer, who died one month later in hospital, was splashed across newspapers globally after the tragedy, with some calling her the “Angel of Bali.”
“The nightmare is that, still 20 years later, Marc’s never going to come back,” said Luke, who now lives in Evans Head, 700km north of Sydney, with her partner, Kieran, and two children.
Marc’s “parents will never see him again. Tom Singer’s parents, they’re the most wonderful people, their whole family, they’ve been rocked,” she said.
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