Bali bombing 20 year anniversary: Coogee Dolphins remember teammates who died in explosion
Six of the 11 Coogee Dolphins who went on a holiday to Bali in 2002 never returned. Twenty years later, two of their teammates reveal the impact that day had on their lives.
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It should have been a post-season trip to paradise. A group of mates from the Coogee Dolphins rugby league club had only been in Bali for two days when they wandered into the Sari Club at 10pm on a Saturday night in 2002.
Their holiday until then had involved playing up at the hotel pool, chasing girls and bar hopping.
No one suspected that an hour later, a van packed with 1500 kgs of explosives would detonate outside the Sari Club, obliterating the popular nightspot and setting fire to what remained.
It was one of three bombs that detonated in Kuta, with another outside popular club Paddy’s Bar and one in front of the American consulate. The terrorist attack killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.
.
Eleven Coogee Dolphins made the trip to Bali, but only five would return home.
Twenty years later two of the survivors sit, coffee in hand, at Coogee Pavilion. The venue looks different from their heyday, they both remark, but lots of things have changed
since then.
“The same feelings come up every year but it’s hard to believe it’s been two decades,” Anthony Ellis, known to the boys as Ellie, says.
“It can be tricky at times not to think about it, but, at the same time, life goes on and a lot has happened, especially since having kids.”
“It was a terrible thing but it was also a sliding doors moment,” Dean “Keffo” Kefford adds.
“If the bombing hadn’t happened, there would have been opportunities we hadn’t had, people we wouldn’t have met, so I think the only way to move on is to focus on the positive aspects.”
It was around 10pm when the Dolphins entered the Sari Club, each ordering a bottle of jungle juice. They laughed, they danced, they talked to girls, but after a day of non-stop drinking, some started to peel away.
Daniel “Shorty” Mortenson was the first to return to the hotel, followed by Keffo, Ellie and Erik De Haart. At 11.08pm Patrick “Patty” Byrne stumbled out of the club, only making it as far as the neighbouring laneway when the bomb went off.
In that sobering moment Patty became first on scene at one of three co-ordinated bombings across Bali that night. He braved the destruction to rescue several badly burned and maimed people, loading them on to the backs of motorbikes to be driven by locals to the nearby hospital. It was a heroic act that later earned Patty a bravery award.
Erik too had witnessed the bombing while making his way back to club after dropping Ellie at the hotel. He rushed back to find his friends. In the chaos of the night, and perhaps a jungle juice haze, neither he nor Patty knew which of their mates were still in the club. It wasn’t until the following day at the hotel that it became clear who made it back.
Friends and teammates Clint Thompson (Coogee Dolphin no. 6), Adam Howard (10), David Mavroudis (5), Shane Foley (8), Gerard Yeo (3) and Joshua Iliffe (4) were killed in the terror attack. Their remains were identified in the days and weeks later, at a makeshift Indonesian morgue or through DNA testing.
The Dolphins’ logo has since been redesigned to include each of their playing numbers, in a tribute to the six beloved men, while the club continues to hold memorial games and an anniversary service to this day.
“We got to play footy with our best mates,” Ellie says. “Some of us were really good friends who had grown up in the same towns before moving to Sydney.
“We had such a great time together, did so many silly things and there are jokes that come to mind even still. Those are the things I try to remember about the boys, and the stories I share with my kids, rather than the circumstances in which they died.”
Ellie had finished playing for the Dolphins before the trip, while Keffo played a couple more seasons after Bali.
Each have had varying involvement with the club over the past 20 years, falling back on the community in dark times.
Patty, a true clubman, served a period as Dolphins president and helped launch its annual sportsman lunch fundraiser in 2000. But while he went on to have children and a life after Bali. In 2014, 12 years after the terror attack, Patty died.
“The 12 years that followed were a rollercoaster of post traumatic stress that sadly ended for Patty,” his brother Jason Byrne said at a memorial service in the months after his death.
“It is a short story of heroism, mateship and tragedy. But the missing parts of Patty’s short story are the most important and those that we cherish the most. On his return home from Bali, Patty made it his mission to honour his mates and support their families: something he did tirelessly and of which our family is most proud.”
Now, the event Patty helped start has been renamed in his honour.
“‘Positive, positive, positive’ is something Patty would always say when anyone would come to him with a drama,” current club president Paul Vanni says, speaking at the Annual Patty Byrne Sportsman Lunch.
“When he passed we thought renaming the event was only fitting. We try to give the other guys their space but they know that we’re here and when they need to see a familiar face or two, they’re always welcome with open arms.”
The past few months have drummed up plenty of difficult moments for Bali survivors. In August one of the bombers, Umar Patek, was released from Indonesian jail early, and just halfway through his sentence.
“Do I agree with it, no, but if I dwell on it, it will drive me mad,” Ellie says. And now, in time for the anniversary, streaming service Stan has released a drama series based on the terror attack.
“I don’t know what’s in it but we weren’t consulted,” Keffo says. “Perhaps naively, I would have liked to have been.”
Neither Ellie nor Keffo have returned to Bali since 2002, and they’re not sure that they ever will. Instead they attend the memorial service each anniversary at Coogee Beach.
“It’s a chance to talk about the good things about the guys,” Ellie says. “It was just a great bunch of people. They were having fun; we were having fun. The positive part to this story is how great those guys were, how good the club is, how strong it made us and how it brought the community, really the whole eastern suburbs community, a sense of unity like never before.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story stated Patrick Byrne had died by suicide in 2014. However, the cause of death has not been publically disclosed.
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