There were tales of great heroism and remarkable acts of courage as Australians converged in Indonesia to help the injured, investigate the attack and remember those lost.
'The start of the rest of my life'
Therese Fox bravely fought through devastating burns to 85 per cent of her body, hundreds of skin grafts, life-threatening infections and agonising physiotherapy.
It took nearly a year in hospital but she defied the expectations of doctors and herself to survive, only to be confronted with unrelenting survivor's guilt.
Two decades on, she is still haunted by the loss of her good friend Bronwyn Cartwright and dozens of others.
"I could go through my burns a hundred times over. The guilt of survival is the hardest thing to live with," Fox said, before breaking down in the face of the overwhelming emotion of her first return to Bali.
Survivor speaks for first time about attack that killed her mother
Ashleigh Airlie was just 14 when her mother, Gayle, was killed in the terror attack.
Four other mums were holidaying with their teenage daughters but the teens survived thanks to being at the back of the Sari Club, where the second bomb went off.
It was just two days before Ashleigh's 15th birthday when the car bomb detonated outside, burying her under the collapsing roof and leaving her grasping for strangers' legs to make it out to the street.
"When I think about it, that's the last place I had a good time with my mum," Ashleigh, now 34, told 9News.
"It was the last place we had fun and she was having the time of her life."
How a bedside interview made Peter the face of tragedy
A hospital bedside TV interview turned Peter Hughes into the face of the tragedy for many but left him feeling "a little bit embarrassed about it all".
"I was dying at the time and I knew that," he said, describing the interview as a chance to show his son Leigh that he was ok, even though he knew he wasn't.
"I was just hanging on back then."
Swollen and barely able to breathe from his burns, Hughes seemed unconcerned by his injuries. Four days later he slipped into a coma with burns to more than half his body.
Two decades on, his skin grafts still niggle and the mental demons come and go but he returns to Bali several times a year.
Survivor gave himself last rites as ruins smouldered around him
Andrew Csabi, critically injured and close to death, gave himself the last rites as he lay on the street outside the smouldering ruins of the Sari Club.
"I looked down, I said, 'my leg's blown off' and I couldn't believe it," he said.
"I laid there quietly and I issued myself last rights."
Nicole and Natalie's remarkable friendship and bravery
Nicole McLean and Natalie Goold were just 23 when the bombs went off. McLean lost her right arm and suffered horrific leg injuries and Goold fought so heroically to save her friend's life that she became one of only four people awarded the Star of Courage medal in the Bali honours list.
"She was just a force to be reckoned with. She knew where we had to go, where we had to be, and she wasn't leaving my side," McLean said.
"She was ripping people's t-shirts off them and shoving them in my leg to stop the blood."
AFP officer recounts horrific aftermath
Australian Federal Police commander Glen McEwen remembers the lines of cars. The smoke, the fire, and the skeletons.
He was in Bali on another mission when he was called to the bombings, to the chaos and heartbreak of ground zero.
"I just can't even explain how a skeleton would remain, with no skin on it, still holding on the steering wheel with smoke coming from its head, considering the blast," he said.
Then came the conversations with the families. The unthinkable admission authorities could not be certain the body in front of them had once been their loved one.
"It was a makeshift morgue. There was still people being found, but there was a number of body bags, and members of the public, family, opening the body bags trying to identify their loved ones," McEwen said.
"And unfortunately, there were some bodies initially released that didn't belong to that particular family."
Saving lives on a fire station floor
Australian Air Force doctor Squadron Leader Steve Cook was told his mission would be relatively simple.
He boarded a Hercules C130 from Darwin expecting to retrieve five people injured by a gas cylinder explosion but arrived at Denpasar Airport to pure chaos.
He set up a makeshift hospital under a hangar on the tarmac, operating on the fire station floor.
"It was just crazy. You open up the back of the utility and there's this badly burned patient with shrapnel injuries, and they had almost no treatment,' Cook said.
"I just thought, 'oh my God, what is happening here?'"
Survivor's heartwarming reunion with medic who saved her life
Cook knew one of his first patients was "tantalisingly" close to home when he had to give her the bad news.
Nicole McLean had survived the horror of the Sari Club and made it onto an RAAF jet that could get her back to Australia within hours.
Cook was relieved to see she wasn't burned but then noticed her arm didn't have a pulse. It was turning black and swelling, and Cook worried she would die of infection or toxins spreading throughout her body if he didn't operate right there on the tarmac.
"I had to say to her 'look, you've gotta actually, we've gotta take you off and gotta operate on you, otherwise, you're gonna lose your arm, or you might die'," Cook recounted, as the pair reunited for the first time in nearly 20 years.
"And you think even to a hardened soldier, that would be a difficult conversation. And I'm looking at a 20-year-old woman on holidays in Bali."
Victims' loved ones
Grieving parents' mission to honour dead sons
Fathers David Dunn and Robert Lewis made a mercy dash to Bali from Ulladulla on the NSW south coast, hoping to find their holidaying sons.
Eventually, the bodies of Craig Dunn and Danny Lewis were found.
To honour their memories, the two families raised money to build the Dunn Lewis Memorial Youth Centre in the small fishing town.
"We've got on with life, but it still hurts every day," Lewis said.
"It's still raw, as raw as can be. I think about it all the time. What could have been. Danno would've been a great dad."
The footy club that lost seven lives on end-of-year trip
It was meant to be a party, an end-of-season footy trip for the young men of Perth's Kingsley Football Club.
Instead, the trip will be forever membered for the carnage it caused: seven young footballers' lives snatched away as they revelled at the Sari Club.
Twenty years later, beyond the mental and physical scars, what's left is a tribute to those players: memorial clubrooms, a tribute match, and No.7 guernsey never to be worn again.
Brad McIlroy, the youngest survivor, was just 19 at the time.
"It was all pretty harrowing, we were lucky to be over there as a group that we could lean on each other," he said.
"I don't know how I would have handled it, I wouldn't have been able to handle it if I was on my own.
"It became our identity for a long time it and it was hard to shake."
Telling the story
"Connecting with people is what I love most about my job," said 9News' Sydney 6pm presenter, Peter Overton.
"Whether it's the audience when I'm broadcasting the six o'clock news or sitting down in front of someone to interview them for 60 Minutes ...
"Twenty years ago, I met and interviewed Bali bombing survivors Nicole McLean, Natalie Goold, Peter Hughes and Andrew Csabi.
"They'd only just survived the horrifying terrorist attack so their injuries and stories of fear and resilience were raw and emotional.
"During those interviews we all became friends. I first saw Peter with burns to 55 per cent of his body just four days after the bombings. He was wrapped in gauze, lying in a coma in Royal Adelaide Hospital. His burns surgeon, Dr John Greenwood, held grave concerns for the Perth roof tiler.
"Months later when I first got to speak to him, he knew it was a miracle he survived.
"I met Nicole, Natalie and Andrew when, along with Peter, we went back to Bali six months after the attack. Their injuries were painfully obvious.
"By then, Nicole had undergone a full amputation of her right arm and Andy had lost his left leg to just above the knee and half his right foot.
"During that trip, I only started to understand the struggle Natalie suffered trying to save the life of her best friend, Nicole. And it was the first time I witnessed the deep friendship between Andy and his mates who were also in the Sari Club that night, Glen Forster and Glen Cosman."
Leading the nation
John Howard was prime minister on the day of the Bali bombings and has recalled the moment he found out about the "brutal, unjustified murder".
"I sensed from the very beginning it would be a high death toll," he said.
"The last thing somebody wants is a prime minister who can't control his emotions. But the last thing they want is a prime minister who doesn't have any emotions and you've got to mix the two," he said.
"The other thing that went through my mind is, 'what could I say to the parents, the girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands, wives, parents?' What could I say?"
He also recalled questioning his own adequacy at expressing the feeling of grief as Australia's prime minister.
"I did my best; I'm sure it wasn't adequate. It never is in those circumstances," he said.
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2022-10-12 09:07:12Z
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