BYRON Bay was one of many communities across Australia which felt the devastating impacts of the cowardly terrorist Bali bombings on October 12, 2002 which claimed so many lives.
Byron Bay businessman, Barry Wallace’s daughter, Jodi, 29, died in the Sari Club blast, as did Marc Gajardo, partner of Hannabeth Luke, daughter of Doug and Maggie Luke.
It was an indescribable tragedy for both families which they shared at the time for readers of the Byron Shire News.
Sevegne Newton, who went on the become president of the Byron Bay Chamber of Commerce, was also there on that terrible night.
Five years after the bombings in 2007, Sevegne spoke to me about her experience and this is the story below I wrote for the Byron Shire News.
She is pictured below launching the Byron Naturally campaign during her time as chamber president.
TOMORROW morning, Sevegne Newton will go to Byron Bay’s Main Beach and throw flowers into the sea.
At the other end of town, at some stage during the day, Doug and Maggie Luke will tie orange ribbons to a special tree they have planted at their home.
Both acts will be a reminder to them and others of the appalling horrors of the Bali bombings which cost the lives of scores of holidaymakers, many of them Australians.
Sevegne was there on that dreadful night and saw first hand the carnage wreaked by the cowardly bombers.
She saw victims with legs and arms blown off. She saw young girls whose skin was literally dropping off them.
She witnessed the chaos in the streets and at the hopelessly under-equipped and staffed Sanglah hospital where for hours on end she gave what help and comfort she could to some of the victims.
And she also was instrumental in helping to get 17 of those victims on to emergency flights out of Bali for medical attention not available in Bali.
For Doug and Maggie, they will be thinking of their daughter, Hannabeth, now living in England, and Marc Gajardo, Hannabeth’s partner who lost his life in the Sari Club explosion.
Hannabeth also helped victims of the bombings, with a photograph of her helping a young man get away from the flames published in newspapers around the world.
Sevegne was in Bali on a regular buying trip for the eight Bali Hai gift shops she owned in Melbourne at the time.
On the night of the bombings she went out with her then partner, David Sharp, and friends for dinner at Seminyak.
Rather than walk back along Legian Street as they normally did and which would have taken them past the Sari Club and Paddy’s Bar where the bombs were placed, she and her friends caught a taxi back to their hotel at Kuta, travelling a different route.
It was just as they were walking into the hotel when there was a loud explosion that rattled the hotel’s windows. There was no immediate thought a bomb had gone off. People were saying there had been a gas explosion.
Within minutes the screaming started.
Sevegne rushed to the balcony of her fourth floor hotel room and saw two blackened girls with “flesh literally dropping off them” trying to get into the hotel.
It was when a security guard pushed the girls away from the hotel that Sevegne and her partner rushed downstairs.
After following a blood trail, they found the girls and told them they had to get them to a hospital. However, one of the girls went into a hotel room with her parents, but the other girl was put into a van and taken to the Bali International Medical Clinic.
“It was just mayhem there,” said Sevegne. “They said they didn’t have the facilities and the girl would have to go to the hospital.”
As it turned out, Sevegne helped take five girls to the Sanglah hospital in a van, with one girl dying on the way.
It was a nightmare scene at the hospital, but she immediately started to do what she could for the victims.
“It was one of those situations where you thought someone was going to tap you on the shoulder, but it never happened,” she said.
“We stepped into triage and we never left.
“My one thought was that I am here and I was meant to be here to help.”
The October 12 Bali bombings changed Sevegne’s life forever.
She said it took 12 months of counselling for her to be able to come to terms with what she saw and heard.
“It totally reshaped my life,” she said.
“My life changed because you don’t watch young people die without assessing your own life. It really made me question everything.”
Several months after the bombings, Sevegne headed off on a road trip to get away from everything, stopping off at Byron Bay.
It didn’t take her long to believe it was where she was meant to be.
She eventually sold her Melbourne shops and moved to Byron Bay more than three years ago where she opened her Temple Light shop in the Feros Arcade.
She remains in contact with some of those people she helped in Bali with one of them staying with her during this year’s Splendour in the Grass.
Some will phone her tomorrow to say ‘thank you’ again.
It will probably be the same on October 12 for many years to come.
Talking about it, still brings tears to her eyes, but she says she is still willing to do so to remind people of the pain the terrorists caused to so many lives.
It angers her to think that the perpetrators may well get reduced sentences.
“There are just no words to cover the pain and suffering they caused,” she said.
“I doubt very much I will get over it. You just learn to live with it.”
FOOTNOTE: Sevegne, wherever you are now, I hope you are well. And the same to Barry, Doug, Maggie and Hannabeth.