My sister, Kerry, received a FB memory from three years ago; she emailed the photo to me and instantly I was taken back to that treacherous time. It was early August 2018, and I was holidaying in Bali with Kerry, her two daughters, partners, and one of their young children. In the week before we left Australia, a deadly and destructive shallow earthquake had struck below the Lombok Islands; it was 6.4 on the Richter scale. It’s such a tragic thing to happen anywhere, but with Indonesia being a third-world country, it makes the situation even more dire.
We were not sure if we should still be travelling, but authorities declared it was safe enough, and so travel we did.
Unbeknown to us, it is pretty cool to have a child in a stroller when you are departing Australia for an overseas trip – two-year-old Harry was our saviour. Thanks to Harry, we were directed to the express lane; I mean, let’s face it, who wants a potentially soon to be screaming kid, in the departure queue, it’s bad enough at the supermarket. The Airport staff were happy to fast track us through – it was a win/win situation for us, and we hoped the other travellers understood the situation, regardless, we were happy zipping through the lengthy queue, it gave us extra time for duty-free shopping.
After landing in Denpasar, we caught a minibus to Padang Bai for our overnight stay. The original plan had been to have an early night, then catch the fast boat to Gili Air the following morning. However, due to the earthquake, all boat services to Lombok and outer Islands had been cancelled, inter-island travel had been declared unsafe.
We had been in regular contact with travel authorities both before and after arriving in Bali, checking when the service might resume. On the morning of the 5th of August, we were notified it had been declared safe enough to travel, so we walked down to the harbour and queued with other excited holiday makers. We were booked on the first fast-boat to Gili Air.
It was a beautiful sunny morning, and the harbour waters looked calm, though it was noisy with excitement from hundreds of fellow travellers as we waited to board the boat. We soon settled into our seats for the hour-and-a-half boat trip, sharing our snacks and I remember Nathan, my niece Jillian’s, partner at the time, saying ‘this doesn’t feel good, it doesn’t feel right’. Nathan suffered from seasickness and was naturally concerned. He kept looking over his shoulder, back towards land. We were only twenty-minutes into the trip, and we all tried to reassure him that the authorities wouldn’t let the boat leave if it wasn’t safe.
How wrong we were. Once we were out in the open waters of the Lombok Strait with no land mass as protection, everything changed. It started with small waves hitting the front screen of the boat, and at first we laughed, not thinking too much of it, though it wasn’t long before the waves were huge and menacing. The laughter stopped abruptly as we soared up over wave after wave, jolting down with a thud as we went down the back of each wave. It was stomach churning and frightening. People were screaming, while others threw up. The fumes from the diesel on the lower level of the boat was nauseating and the constant battering of the waves on our tiny vessel was terrifying, we were worried the glass screen would smash.
There was no safety talk before we left shore and so we didn’t know where the lifejackets were, and we thought, if there were any, there possibly wouldn’t be one for every passenger. It was such a scary situation that we started making plans for what we would do if we did start to ‘go down’. Jay, Rachel's husband, who had stored his surfboard in the luggage compartment said ‘if we started sinking, he would do his best to get the board and then grab the fire extinguisher and smash the window, he would take Harry with him. We would all have to fend for ourselves. Shit was getting real. The German guy behind us was yelling out ‘turn the boat around, turn the boat around’. Most of us thought that might be more dangerous than forging on. We really didn’t think the driver would be able to handle this manoeuvre in such treacherous conditions, so most of us were telling him to be quiet. The waves continued pounding the front window of the boat. The stench from the vomit was putrid and vile.
In the early days after Jess’s death this would have been the perfect ending for me, but in 2018, I was learning to love life again. I remember thinking ‘this sucks, why now’.
It sounds so ridiculously melodramatic to me now, but back then, as hope collided with fear and uncertainty, I sent a message to two friends, asking them if anything happened to me, and we didn’t survive, could they do their best to get my manuscript published. I had spent three years writing Jessica’s Gift and I thought it was nearly ready to be turned into a book.
We never made it to Gili Air; the boat eventually turned around, which was scary, we thought we were going to tip, but we didn’t. After cruising safely back to the harbour, we walked to the same hotel in Padang Bai, hoping they had a room for each of us. We spent two nights in Padang Bai rearranging travel plans, then caught a minibus to Ubud, where we spent a few days. From Ubud we travelled south to Seminyak. On that first night in Seminyak, Kerry and I went to a restaurant while the others went to the beach to watch the last of the day's light sink away. We had only just started eating our meal when we looked at each other and at the same time said, ‘did you feel that’? It took a few seconds to realise what was happening, then we, like everyone else, ran out to the darkened street and waited. Kerry was frantic not knowing where her girls were. We didn’t know then, but apparently there was a 6.9 magnitude earthquake happening somewhere else in Indonesia, we thought it was another aftershock. We really didn’t know what to do - confusion and worry was creeping in, though we tried to stay calm. It was some time later that we caught a taxi back to our villa and prayed that Kerry’s family would be safe. We sat in the courtyard and waited.
Sadly, the death toll from this earthquake was well over five-hundred with over three-hundred-thousand people displaced. Reports are that there were over three-hundred aftershocks that continued for weeks.
In the days that followed the six of us and baby Harry shopped for essential items to donate to those whose lives had been impacted by this tragedy.