The Bali bombings – when I couldn’t bear witness

Photo: The memorial in Kuta Beach to the 202 victims, including 88 Australians

I’ve been thinking a lot about the journalists covering the horrific story unfolding in Israel and Gaza, both on the ground and working with distressing imagery in newsrooms around the world. Hamas’ massacre of people at the Israeli music festival reminded me of the Bali bombings, where young holidaymakers were senselessly murdered.

Today is the 21st anniversary of the Bali bombings (journalists remember dates. Of course, so do survivors and their families). I thought this little edited extract from my memoir Line in the Sand might help some of the journalists working on the Mideast story. I suspect it might interest anyone who has encountered a lot of trauma in the workplace. It took me 18 years to understand why I couldn’t do my job at a critical point in Bali.

This extract picks up where I’m at the bomb site in Kuta Beach, the morning after the attacks, which killed 202 people. (Note: some readers may find this content distressing)

It didn’t register I was treading on the edge of a crime scene that should have been swarming with investigators. I was the only one on it. Fire crews had extinguished the inferno, but wisps of smoke rose from the ashes. An acrid taste invaded my mouth, my nostrils. I was afraid of smelling flesh. My foot disturbed a piece of wood, revealing a bloodied hand, palm down, shorn off at the wrist. I kept moving. Something then stopped me in my tracks. Evil. There was a formless presence from the ruins to the street. I could feel it, almost touch it. I’d read about survivors who say evil visits the site of a manmade atrocity. I wasn’t religious or spiritual, I was a methodical news agency journalist who did one story and moved on to the next. I believed in what I could see. But there was evil there. It’s a sensation I never experienced again.

I took a taxi to the main hospital in Denpasar, Bali’s capital. I rushed to the doors but stopped to allow nurses pushing a foreigner on a gurney to enter. The young man was probably in his early twenties, but his entire face was burned, so it was hard to tell. A white sheet covered the rest of his body. He stared silently at the ceiling. I froze. I’d never seen a burns victim. My stomach clenched; I felt like a voyeur. I shouldn’t be here. I can’t intrude given what these people are going through. I moved away from the entrance, where I wouldn’t be noticed. It was remarkably quiet because everyone was inside the 770-bed Sanglah hospital. My job was simple – go into the public wards where rows of burned and maimed survivors lay, some alone, others comforted by family or friends, and get their story. Indonesian hospitals had little security, and I could talk my way past just about anyone. But I couldn’t do my job. I didn’t even know what questions to ask.

What if family members get angry, call me a vulture? Is that what I am?

Years later I think a part of me would have struggled to cope with the distress inside. I didn’t have the emotional tools to deal with such grief. But the biggest obstacle at that moment was confusion, or was it shame? My identity was at stake. In that moment, I didn’t want to be a journalist. Or I didn’t know how.

I couldn’t go to the hospital morgue either, which was full of bodies charred beyond recognition, wrapped in white sheets. Many more lay in a courtyard at the back of the hospital. Because I couldn’t go through the front doors, I didn’t see a large noticeboard inside with pages of names stuck to it. A page for each letter in the alphabet, people reported missing by relatives and friends from all over the world – crucial details for any news story. I didn’t speak to a single person.

My mind warred with itself for 15–20 minutes, then I took a taxi back to Kuta Beach.

That was the biggest story of my life at the time. It was nearly 15 years before I told my life partner Mary what happened. Longer to understand why.

That evening I lay on a big bed at the Hard Rock Hotel Bali, a short walk from the bomb site. It was 8 or 9 pm. I think the Reuters team was staying at the hotel, but I didn’t get everyone together. I should have had the text journalists, photographers and camera operators planning coverage for the next day (I was deputy bureau chief for Indonesia). My mind wandered as I stared at the ceiling.

Years later I recall a weird sensation in my body as I lay on that bed. I think my body was trying to do something: shake, shiver, sweat. I’m not sure, but I suspect trauma was trying to escape. I was a failure for not entering the hospital. I grieved for the Balinese. My luxurious hotel room insulted the dead, the survivors and their families.

I now know what it was that cut me to the bone all those years ago – I dishonoured the survivors by not telling their story. By not doing my job. That was my shame. Sure, some people don’t want to talk to journalists in such a situation. But many do. They want the world to know what happened and as a journalist you can give them the choice.

When I look back over my career, I can’t recall anyone in crisis saying no to me.

I’m also reminded of what Cait McMahon from the The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma said several years ago, how some journalists didn’t know whether to act as a reporter or a person when covering traumatic events. Those who were confused about their role had the highest post-trauma reactions, Cait’s research had shown.

‘It seems it doesn’t matter which way you go as long as you’re clear and feel good about your decision. It’s the ambivalence that can be your undoing,’ Cait had said.

I’ve wondered if this made me more vulnerable. I spent nearly a week in Bali churning out story after story but still didn’t go to the hospital. It was the only time I ever felt conflicted about my role to bear witness.

When I next see my psychologist Dee Cooper in Launceston (it’s 2020), I recognise the emotions in my body as we talk about Bali.

‘You dissociated there,’ she says. ‘You checked out, split off what happened and ended up with memory fragments you never processed, never integrated into your life, until now.’

Tears well in my eyes. My whole body feels hot. I sit with the sensation. I’m okay with it. I struggle a bit for a month as I go through the old Bali material. But writing down my thoughts helps. So does allowing the experience to roam my mind during my walks, while I’m driving or talking with Mary.

In a later session, Dee asks me to consider my mental state when I got to the Sanglah hospital. I think back: I’d reported the story from home in Jakarta that night, was in the newsroom for hours, went to the airport, no sleep, flew to Bali, then to the bomb site. Maybe it wasn’t humanly possible to enter the wards, I say. And you didn’t know how to sit with those people, adds Dee.

The final piece to Bali is in place and it’s not what I expect: I show myself compassion.