Bali - Bomb Memorial

October 12, 2002 is a date that won't soon be forgotten in Australia. It's the day several bombs went off in Kuta, killing a lot of people on holidays. The bomb was meant to target Americans, but the country worst hit was Australia. A lot of people died. It was ugly. There's now a memorial to the dead adjacent to where the Sari Club once stood.


What surprised me, was how old the memorial looked. It seemed like it had been there for decades, whilst the bombing itself seemed fresh in my memory, as if it has only happened last year.

It has become a site of pilgrimage for most Australians visiting Kuta. As I stood there, a lot of other young Australians came up and asked "Is that it". The locals are only too happy to tell their stories of the night, of friends who died, taxi drivers killed. It's something to will live in the collective consciousness of the island for a long time to come.

I was surprised at how emotional I became as I read through the list of names. So many people killed. I was also surprised by the number of countries who suffered the loss. For Australians, Bali is not an unusual holiday destination, but there were people on the list from Ecuador and Brazil. For them, this must have seemed as exotic as the moon. While dying senselessly in a terrorist act is never a good thing, it was very sad to think of these people who had come from the other side of the planet only to die due to a hateful crime. It made me think of the cemeteries in the fields of France. Those cemeteries are in a way also memorials to youth going to the other side of the planet for an adventure, which also ended tragically. I guess we should be thankful that the Bali people died seeking a good time, not in a senseless war. It's still a tragedy though and one hard to reconcile with the happy beach atmosphere that still pervades all of Bali.