Bali bombing: Haunting, heartbreaking deaths of victims Simone Hanley, Tracy Thomas and Jodie O’Shea

How can a sound you don’t hear, make you cry? How can a force you don’t feel, knock you over? How can a moment you’re unaware of, change your life? Just after 1am on Sunday, October 13, 2002, those weren’t the questions trickling through Maryjane Hanley’s mind. Her only query was whether to stay at her best friend Suzy’s place or make her way home. The pair had been at a birthday dinner party and were ready to call it a night. Because it was late she shrugged her shoulders and decided to bunk at her mate’s place. It wasn’t far from the Hanley family home in Menai in Sydney’s southern suburbs where she had raised three children — Renae, 30, Simone, 28, and Danny 22. The two girls now had their own lives, Renae being married with a young son, and Simone living nearer to the CBD. But the sisters were as close as their matching smiles and were together at that very moment on holiday in Bali. So Maryjane drifted off into what would be her last truly peaceful sleep. At the same time on the other side of the country, Kimberley Knighton was in good spirits. She’d farewelled her teenage years only two weeks beforehand and was catching up with friends in her hometown of Geraldton, on WA’s Mid-West coast. After a year in Melbourne she’d returned west that week to start a job as part of her savings strategy for her long-planned European holiday. It was 11.05pm in WA, and she would stay out for a little while longer with the mates she’d missed over the past 12 months. It was a fun night. On the same time zone, but 2200km directly north of Geraldton, is the holiday hot spot of Kuta in Bali. And at 11.08pm that Saturday night an Indonesian man named Feri, loyal to violent Islamist group Jemaah Islamiah, walked through the front door of popular tourist pub Paddy’s. As he headed towards the back of the bar he reached for a detonation cord on the side of his suicide vest and pulled it. The force of the blast decapitated the bomber and killed nine innocent people instantly. A fireball spun through the air like a giant sparkler setting the building alight. The patrons who weren’t propelled across the room or into walls scrambled to reach what was left of the entrance. Stumbling through broken glass, debris and over battered bodies, they made it outside where a line of traffic was waiting behind a white Mitsubishi L300 van that had come to a standstill in front of the Sari Club. The man behind the wheel was named Arnasan and in the back was almost 1000kg of bombs stacked in 12 rickety filing cabinets. At 11:08.31 precisely, a time later verified by satellite technology, Arnasan pulled the booby-trapped handbrake and a tonne of explosives shook the night club strip. Car parts, bricks and shrapnel flew up to 400m away. Lights went out, buildings collapsed, palm trees lay flat on the ground and fires started. For an instant there was silence. Then the anguished pleas for help began, before a cacophony of terrifying screams pierced the night sky. Those up to 15km away felt and heard a distant, dull thud. An orange glow pulsed above Kuta followed by a grey mushroom cloud that floated skyward. The further away from the explosions the less tangible evidence of destruction there was. But, like a pebble being dropped in a pond, the ripple effect reverberated even further. Through the night and across the oceans the impact of the bombs spread like an oil slick staining the atmosphere as horror stories snaked through telephone lines. News of the carnage was being relayed across the world and within hours the bombs’ tentacles had reached into homes all over Australia. Houses in suburbs such as Kingsley in Perth, Footscray in Melbourne, Loganholme on the Gold Coast. And a house in Menai in Sydney, and another one in Geraldton, WA. ***** Around 8am on that Sunday morning, Dr Fiona Wood, the head of the burns unit at Royal Perth Hospital received a phone call from Dr Anthony Williams, a registrar on duty at RPH. He’d just spoken to trainee surgeon Vijith ‘Vij’ Vijayasekaran who was immersed in chaotic scenes in Sanglah Hospital, Denpasar. Vij had arrived in Bali the day before, but when the bombs had gone off he and a handful of other Aussie doctors in the area put their holidays on hold to help out. “Vij and his wife Priya, an anaesthetist, had only just headed off for a break,’‘ Dr Wood said. “But the good thing was that Vij had just finished his burns rotation at Royal Perth. Up until the Friday he was here working with me. “So for him to be in Bali meant we had very good intelligence because he really knew burns well. And from the numbers he was talking about I knew a lot of those affected would end up here.’‘ Dr Wood then rang the hospital’s executive director, Bill Beresford, and director of clinical services, Phil Montgomery with the simple warning: “I think we’ve got a problem.’‘ Looking back she says it was a gut instinct. “I assumed they’d be coming to Royal Perth because we were the closest,’‘ she said. “I didn’t know how many there would be but we knew it was going to be double figures and so, instinctively, we started preparing.’‘ Royal Perth Hospital has had a burns unit since the early 1960s and Dr Wood had been in charge of it since 1991. Born in Yorkshire, northern England, she migrated to Perth in 1987 after meeting her Australian husband in London. With six children and a high profile, she was the picture of English efficiency and had been at the forefront of burns treatment in Australia having developed a process called spray-on skin in which cells can be cultivated from good skin and then directly sprayed onto burns. She had also been involved in national disaster planning strategies prior to the 2000 Sydney Olympics and, in 2001, had worked with Woodside and other RPH staff in a catastrophe training exercise in case there was ever a major emergency with a large number of burns patients. This could be that day. Dr Wood was rostered on so, after doing her rounds, she and other senior staff had an executive meeting to make sure the hospital was ready for action. By mid-afternoon they had been told RPH could expect the first patients to arrive early on Monday morning. Confident all was under control she dashed up to Frasers Restaurant in Kings Park for a wedding she’d been invited to. It was here she got her first glimpse of the carnage in Kuta. During a call with officials from the Federal Department of Health, she noticed an image on a TV screen at the back of the restaurant that stunned her. “I was on the phone to Canberra and I remember seeing Peter Hughes on TV and he’s there, quite humbly, telling everyone that he has 50 per cent burns and he’s OK and there are people worse off than him,’‘ she recalled. “And I’m telling them in Canberra that if you don’t get him out of there pretty soon he will not be OK, he will be dead.’‘ Burns victims, at first, can be quite lucid. So even though they may be in pain, they can talk and be dismissive of the extent of their injuries. When someone suffers serious burns they lose their skin layers, which is a human being’s protective coating. So not only does fluid leak out, but there’s nothing stopping infection getting in. Meanwhile, their organs are collapsing, and the next step is they lose their airway — which is fatal. ***** That same morning in Menai in Sydney, Maryjane took a guarded phone call from Renae’s husband, Jason. There’d been a gas bottle explosion or some type of bomb in Kuta and Renae, Simone and one of their girlfriends, Francoise, hadn’t been seen since the night before. What’s more, the trio had been planning to have a drink at the Sari Club where the blast had occurred. Maryjane’s heart seized. There had been five girlfriends holidaying in Bali so the two who hadn’t gone to the Sari Club were now searching Kuta’s medical centres. Within hours the Hanley family home became a beehive of bedlam. Relatives, friends and neighbours dropped in; phones rang; emotions burst. Then one of the girls in Bali called to say she’d found an injured Simone in a makeshift army hospital. Maryjane reached for the phone to hear her daughter whisper: “I love you Mum’‘. There was speculation Renae was in another hospital, but this couldn’t be confirmed. Later that night a government official rang to say Simone would be transferred to Royal Perth Hospital. Maryjane and her estranged husband, Danny, booked a flight. ***** Dozing on her bed in her father’s Geraldton house about 1pm on that same Sunday afternoon, Kimberley Knighton opened her eyes to the sound of a text message. She glanced at her phone, “Is your mum all right?’‘ “Is my mum all right?’‘. Kimberley scrunched her face. “Is my mum all right? What’s that supposed to mean?’‘ she thought. She looked at the TV in her bedroom and saw images of absolute terror. People screaming, sirens wailing, buildings destroyed. Bali seemed to be on fire. She got up and wandered out to the living room where her dad and stepmother were grimly watching. “What’s going on?’‘ she asked. Her father looked up at her: “Your mum’s in Bali.’‘ Kimberley was stunned. What?! She knew her mum was planning to go to Bali, but no one had said she’d already left. Kimberley had only been back in Geraldton two days and had planned to call her mum, who lived in Perth. Now she felt guilty she hadn’t spoken to her mum and angry no one had told her she was away. They rang the government helpline and got in touch with Kimberley’s two sisters, Carla, 21, and Lauren, 18. That night they were told their mum, Tracy Thomas, was all right and would be on the first plane home. Kimberley breathed a sigh of relief. “The next day I went to work because I wanted to save some money for my overseas trip,’‘ she recalled. “But then my step mum rang me and said, ‘Where are you love?’ and I said, ‘I’m down at the corner, I’ll be home soon’, and I remember pulling up and walking through the house and there was Dad, my step mum and their daughter just all standing out the back. “I’m suddenly thinking, ‘Something’s not right here’ and Dad says, ‘Come over and give me a cuddle’, and that’s when I knew. Even though the last thing I’d heard was that she was all right I just knew. Dad said, ‘It’s ya mum, hon’, and I just knew something was really wrong.’‘ What followed was a four-hour drive to Perth, because something was wrong, Tracy had suffered horrific burns and was now at Royal Perth Hospital. Kimberley’s stepmother drove while the anxious 20-year-old middle daughter stared out the window with tears staining her cheeks. “I can remember the drive like it was yesterday,’‘ Kimberley reflected. “Just looking out the window thinking, ‘You better be alright mum, you better be alright’. “She was the best mum. She was our T-ball trainer . . . she did everything with us. When we were little all my friends would say, ‘Can I have your mum? Your mum’s so great’. She was my best friend and I loved her so much.’‘ ***** Hours earlier, the national emergency system had swung into action transporting patients out of Denpasar. At Perth international airport, RPH’s emergency manager David Carbonell was also in readiness, having set up a triage with doctors and nurses to decide where incoming patients should go. And then, just before 2.30am, on Monday, October 14, the twinkling lights of a RAAF Hercules C-130 crept out of the darkness above them carrying five seriously injured Aussies. Soon after a Garuda flight landed with six more wounded passengers and at 3.45am the private jet of Channel 7 boss Kerry Stokes touched down with nine patients on board. By 5am, 12 critically injured burns victims had been transported to RPH. Eight other patients, with mainly shrapnel injures, were admitted to Fremantle and Sir Charles Gairdner hospitals. Among those to arrive at RPH was 29-year-old Sydney woman Jodie O’Shea who had burns to 93 per cent of her body. When she was wheeled into the emergency department she charmed the staff with her fragile smile and politeness, but the experienced doctors and nurses in ED were heartbroken. They knew she couldn’t be saved. ``Well, at least she will die with her family,’‘ they thought. And she did. Jodie passed away in her mother Rhonda’s arms later that day. Two of the other patients in the first transportation were Tracy Thomas, 41, of Perth, and 28-year-old Simone Hanley, from Sydney. As other wounded holidaymakers arrived decisions were made as to where they should go. One of the people working with Dr Wood was Burns Unit clinical nurse specialist Joy Fong, who had been at RPH for 30 years. The Malaysian-born matriarch of the hospital would prove a rock over the next seven days, mothering some of the more-inexperienced nurses through the trauma they would witness. “There was obviously a triage at the airport, but we had a second one set up outside ED,’‘ Ms Fong explained. “There it was decided if the patients went straight to theatre for cleaning and debriding (where dead or damaged tissue is removed) or to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) for ventilation and support. “Others who didn’t have major burns, and those with less than 30 per cent burns _ and that is in no way a minor burn, but there were more urgent cases at the time — went to the burns unit which had been extended into the plastic surgery ward next to it.’‘ As well as balancing patients’ fluid levels and cleaning their wounds, an integral procedure for burns victims is what’s called an escharotomy where surgical incisions are made to stop the burnt, swelling skin becoming so tight that it restricts breathing and stops blood flow. If blood doesn’t get to the outer extremities, amputations become an option. “It’s the fluids, airway, circulation and the escharotomy,’‘ Dr Wood said of priorities when burns patients were being presented. “And with the escharotomies we cut around the chest like a Roman chest plate so it loosens the skin and the patient can actually breathe. It’s very distressing not being able to breathe. So it was my job to decide who needs an escharotomy and who needs it quick.’‘ While the hospital had prepared well and was working with efficiency, the smell that accompanied the patients was not a good sign. Faeces, which had reportedly been smeared in one of the bombs, were compounding infections — and it had now been 30 hours since the terrorist attack, plenty of time for wounds to fester. Kimberley Knighton remembers the smell and the shock of seeing her mum for the first time. Tracy seemed oversized due to the swelling from the burns and the fluids that had been pumped inside her. She was also wrapped up in bandages and lying with her arms and legs splayed out on splints. Even after so many years, Kimberley struggles to talk about it. “I’ll never forget that smell,’‘ she said. “And when I first saw Mum in the ward it’s something that will always stay with me. “She was in an induced coma, but I was thinking, ‘That’s not my mum, it couldn’t be’. We were in denial. “Everything was covered up, she was wrapped in bandages and we weren’t allowed to touch her — three girls, we were only girls, not allowed to touch our mum.’‘ For the next week Kimberley would doze quietly in a chair near her mum’s bed or in the waiting room, but she couldn’t sleep in her hotel bed. Guilt got the better of her. Even though her mother was unconscious, the image of Tracy lying in such an awkward position with her arms and legs outstretched (an essential procedure to keep patients’ skin from tightening) haunted her daughter’s mind. She just couldn’t sleep on a soft, comfortable bed with that picture in her head. While the three young sisters couldn’t touch their mum they did everything they could to look out for the woman they loved. Kimberley whispered stories to her, assured her she would be all right and put Walkman earphones on the pillow in case music might stir her from her silence. Kimberley, Carla and Lauren had to leave the room when the nurses were redressing Tracy so one day the three girls walked across the road to St Mary’s Cathedral. There they sat in a pew, held hands and tears rolled down their young faces. “We all went to the church and lit a candle,’‘ Kimberley recalled. “It was the middle of the day. All three of us. There was just us. We sat there holding hands, three sisters doing it tough, having a cry and not believing what was happening.’‘ ***** At 2pm on Monday, October 14, Maryjane Hanley landed in Perth. Both her daughters, Renae and Simone, had worked at Toyota in Sydney and the company had paid for the families’ airfares and accommodation. “They were fantastic,’‘ Maryjane said. “They also flew over other family members and friends. The girls were highly thought of at Toyota and they just wanted to make it easy for us.’‘ Something that wasn’t easy was a mother walking into RPH and seeing her youngest daughter in an induced coma, wrapped in bandages with arms and legs outstretched on splints. “Simone was critical but stable and had burns to 75 per cent of her body,’‘ Maryjane said. “Her kidneys weren’t working, her body temperature was low and she was on a ventilator to help her breathe due to the heat inhalation in her lungs.’‘ But Maryjane knew something the doctors didn’t know. Simone was a fighter. She was her little blonde dynamo who was always up for a challenge. Whereas her first born, Renae, was more delicate and reserved, ‘Mona’ had a spirit of steel. So Maryjane started a diary and called it “Simone’s Recovery’‘, determined to give it to her daughter when she won her battle with the burns. For that Monday she wrote about Simone’s condition and the challenges that lay ahead. But there was also another girl at the forefront of her mind and at the bottom of the page she wrote: “No news of Renae’‘. ***** Over the next three days more patients were transported to RPH and soon the hospital was turning into an ants’ nest of activity. Apart from the injured Aussies there were Bali bomb victims from England, Scotland, Germany, Indonesia and New Zealand so families and friends were flying in from all over the world. Extra staff had been rostered on and doctors and nurses from other hospitals were also ringing in to offer help. The media were camped outside and one journalist even disguised himself as a patient to try to steal a scoop. From that moment locks were placed on doors and anyone heading to the Burns Unit had to identify themselves. The major surgical procedures would take place from Wednesday October 16 until Sunday October 20. In total at RPH there would be 30 operations with 19 surgeons working side-by-side. Dr Wood would co-ordinate the production assisted by RPH burns-plastic surgeon Dr Mark Duncan-Smith and fellow Dr Anna Goodwin-Walters. Other specialists involved included Dr Colin Kikiros and Dr Ian Gollie from Princess Margaret Hospital. Four theatres would be running concurrently for five days. RPH nursing director Carmel McCormack shakes her head in wonder when thinking about that frantic week. “I remember at one stage I turned around and there were all these surgeons who had worked here over the years saying, `Where do you want us Fiona?’ And plastic surgeons from around town came in to help as well,’‘ Ms McCormack recalled. “Fiona would say, ‘OK, you, you and you in theatre four, you over there’. She’d have a whiteboard up and talk them through it saying, ‘This is what I want you to do’. And they’d do it. Then she’d pop from theatre to theatre telling everyone what to do. “I’ve known her for 30 years, since she was a training registrar, but she really did pull it off that week. I’m mindful of all the others involved, too, but it was Fiona who brought it all together. “To everyone’s credit there wasn’t one complaint. No one whinged about workload or being told what to do — and we’re talking senior medical people here. That collegiate approach was quite astounding.’‘ And it needed to be because some operations would take more than 10 hours involving a production line of staff. “In a burns theatre you need about six nurses compared to two or three in normal theatre,’‘ Ms McCormack said. “A lot of the Bali patients didn’t have any skin to get grafts so we were using Integra artificial skin. It’s incredibly expensive — about $2500 for an A4 sheet so it would cost $300,000-plus for an average patient. “More importantly, it has to be prepared properly. It comes in a glass of alcohol so you have to rinse each sheet for five to 10 minutes. Then you have to keep updating your water because alcohol’s getting in and all the while you’re opening and closing bottles. “Then there are two scrub nurses helping the surgeon. Plus dressings have to be continually opened and redone so that’s another two nurses. It’s a big production.’‘ It’s also a hot one. When operating on burns patients the temperature has to be around 36 degrees celsius so medical staff in the theatres were stained with sweat. As well as the heat, there was the heartache. Some of the nurses drafted from other areas of the hospital broke down in tears at the end of their shifts, traumatised by the agony patients were going through. Joy Fong’s 30 years’ experience in the Burns Unit meant she was often consoling the girls who patients saw as their guardian angels. “One day the nurses in the extended ward were crying,’‘ she recalled. “There were two German boys, just teenagers, with 30 per cent burns and the nurses couldn’t cope with the pain they were creating. The dressings were very painful and the boys were in agony. “After 30 years working with burns patients you learn how to try to shield yourself from the pain, but these nurses were very upset. “So we organised to have an anaesthetist in the ward every day who could give the boys intravenous pain relief if necessary. That is not normally done. But during Bali there were times when we just had to cut through the red tape.’‘ **** As Simone’s 10-hour operation approached on Friday October 18 Maryjane diligently filled out her diary, but this time instead of, “No news of Renae’‘, she wrote, “Starting to acknowledge we will not get Renae back alive’‘. Maryjane was scared. For 30 years she’d looked after her two daughters, always able to help. But now their destinies were out of her control. So she had to ask for someone else’s help. Later that day, in her meeting with Dr Wood about what Simone’s surgery would involve she made one polite plea: “Please save this one Fiona, I think the other one might be dead.’‘ ***** The next day, Saturday, October 19, Kimberley and her two sisters were also preparing for their mum’s operation. It would last for almost 14 hours. “I just wanted her to pull through,’‘ Kimberley said. “I just hoped and hoped she would pull through. “The operation went for ages so I spent some time walking around Perth just thinking of Mum. Then my sister, Carla, called and said I better come back. “We had a meeting with Dr Wood and she explained that the infection was really bad and they could keep trying to fight it by amputating arms and legs and toes and fingers but there were no guarantees. They’d tried spray-on skin, but the infections had got under it. She said they could keep trying but parts of Mum’s body were packing it in. “So we had a choice to make.’‘ The next day the sisters, their father and their grandmother, Tracy’s mum, made that choice. For seven days the girls had sat with tears trickling down their faces staring at their mother, not allowed to touch her but willing her to wake. Now, on October 20, Tracy’s time was up and the girls were told they could finally reach out to their mum. So Carla, Kimberley and Lauren Knighton, the three daughters of Tracy Thomas, stacked their hands on top of each other’s and placed them on their mother’s heart. Then, at some stage, she’s not sure when, Kimberley walked away. Out of the ward, down the corridor and through the hospital’s main entrance. She walked and she walked and she walked. “I don’t know where I went,’‘ she says years later, crying again as she did back then. “I just walked and walked. And if I could have kept walking I would have just walked away from everything. I’d just lost my mum — a 20-year-old girl without her mum. It was the hardest week of my entire life.’‘ ***** On that Sunday and for the next 10 days, Simone’s condition remained stable. At times, when the sedation levels locking her in the induced coma were low, she moved her head, grimaced and even mouthed the word “Mum’‘. Maryjane remained by her daughter’s bedside faithfully filling out her diary. At the bottom of each page she wrote, “No Renae’‘. Then on October 29, the 17th day Simone had been in hospital, the Hanley family received news that Renae’s body had been identified. Despite being in a coma Simone also looked unhappy. Her face was swollen and she seemed to have taken a turn. Maryjane painfully noted that “this has been our toughest day’‘. For the next two weeks Maryjane stayed by Simone’s bedside locked in their silent world on the fifth level of RPH. Family and friends flew over, phone calls kept coming through and cards and letters arrived in the mail. In the beds around Simone other Bali victims were slowly recovering, some had even started their ever-so-slight physiotherapy. Perth victims such as Peter Hughes and Kingsley footballer Phil Britten arrived at RPH after initially being treated at Royal Adelaide Hospital. While others woke up, Simone lay still. On November 12, day 32 in the diary, Maryjane flew to Sydney for Renae’s funeral where her family — and seemingly the whole Sutherland Shire — lurched with sobs for a life lost too soon. Then she returned to RPH. She would only leave the hospital one more time to fly back to Sydney for the funeral of Simone and Renae’s travelling mate Francoise, whose body was identified shortly after Renae’s. On December 2, day 51, Dr Wood advised Maryjane that Simone was very sick. Her skin grafts weren’t working and it was obvious she was losing too much fluid. Over the next few days her condition deteriorated. Her lower left leg, which had been a problem throughout, continually bled and septicemia had set in. On Friday, December 6, her condition was downgraded to “grave’‘ and the family was told her left leg and right arm may need to be amputated. “I was terribly shocked,’‘ Maryjane admits. “But I could see she wasn’t well. Her bandages were damp and I just knew that wasn’t a good sign.’‘ In a drastic measure, Dr Wood decided donor skin grafts would be their final option — something she hadn’t done since 1992. Simone’s father and brother volunteered without hesitation in a process that would see skin stripped off their backs to help their limp loved one. But on Sunday, December 8, Simone had picked up a respiratory infection and was so weak that Dr Wood cancelled the surgery. Maryjane was afraid. She sat by her daughter’s bedside for hours talking to her and praying for guidance. At 8pm she knew what to do. It was time to let go. True to her pledge she wrote down her decision: “Simone, I’ve spoken to you and have given you permission to leave us if it’s too difficult for you to continue the fight.’‘ The next day, Monday, December 9, Dr Wood decided to go ahead with the surgery but it would have to be in Simone’s room as she was too weak to move. After an hour Maryjane and the rest of the family were called to the interview room nearby and told their little blonde battler was just not responding. There was zero chance Simone would survive. With that Maryjane said her last tearful farewell to her “Mona’‘. But as the rest of the family stood around her bed, Maryjane had to leave. After being with her daughter for her healthy, happy 28 years and almost all of her bedridden 58 days, she could not be there when they finally turned the machines off. She waited in the corridor outside and wrote a final note in “Simone’s Recovery” diary. “I am so, so sorry and so, so sad. I know my heart will never fully recover from the loss of my two beautiful daughters. xxx” Simone would be the 88th and final Australian victim of the Bali bombings. While dozens died instantly on the night of October 12, 2002, Simone lost her battle almost two months later. All up, 202 people were killed and another 240 injured. And there are countless others around the world, such as Maryjane Hanley and Kimberley Knighton, who weren’t anywhere near Kuta that night, but have lived in pain ever since. Ripple-effect victims of a terrifying attack they hadn’t actually heard, never physically felt and didn’t even know had happened. * Billy Rule spoke to those involved 10 years after the Bali bombings, and we republish today to mark the 20th anniversary

Bali bombing: Haunting, heartbreaking deaths of victims Simone Hanley, Tracy Thomas and Jodie O’Shea

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