Today we tell the stories of some of our survivors and those left behind who can never forget.

THE HARDY FAMILY

IT’S 11.04pm on a Saturday night and the party is in full swing at the Sari Club.

The music is pumping as eight young men from Southport Sharks Australian rules club are all smiles, laughing and celebrating the end of the season in Bali.

Close to the bar is Billy Hardy, a fresh-faced Gold Coaster with a love of footy, who is at the centre of the celebrations.

The clock turns 11.05pm and Billy raises a beer and yells out “cheers”.

A split second later, a flash of light, heat and fire engulf the Sari Club as an explosion demolishes the party precinct.

Billy disappears in the flash. He will never be seen alive again.

The young man was one of 88 Australians to die in the terrorist attack by members of Jemaah Islamiah, which claimed 202 lives in total.

Twenty long years have now passed since the horror of October 12, 2002 and Billy has now been dead for as many years as he was alive.

But the pain of his loss has never left his devastated family who can’t but wonder what would have become of their boy.

A career in sport and a couple of kids of his own. Things which never can be.

Billy’s older sister Jess admits that the events of October 2002 derailed her life and left her “shattered” for 10 years.

“I think about it now that it’s been 20 years, I probably haven’t been coherent for most of it,” she said.

“Twenty years is the amount of time he lived on this planet, he was 20. So I knew him for 20 years, and now going without him for 20 years, it’s just such a blur.

“I really did hit rock bottom during that whole 10-year period … I feel like a part of me died that day … I just thought, “How am I going to get on without him.”

Jess, now 45, says she remained bitter about the loss of her brother but eventually came to forgive the bombers.

But Billy’s father Bill has never been able to forgive the bombers for the death of his boy.

“How does it affect your life when a parent loses a child, especially one who is your mate?

Who I loved watching play in footy and we’d have so much interaction together? I don’t know how to put it in words, that you’re just empty,” he said.

“You’re just empty. That’s how a broken heart is, you’re just empty. And of course, people think, “Oh, 20 years.” It doesn’t really get that much better.

“What happens is, in the first months, years, you think about it every 10 minutes, then you think about it every hour.

“But then 20 years later, you’re still thinking about it once every couple of days. I won’t say once a day, but I’d say a couple of days.”

The last time Billy’s family saw him was at the Southport Sharks annual awards evening just before he flew out to Bali.

Photos of that night, showing Billy smiling broadly and posing with Jess and their mother Christine, continue to be treasured by the Hardys.

The bombing of the Sari Club and Paddy’s Bar made immediate news in Australia but the Hardys were initially unaware until the next morning.

Bill was in North Queensland on a work trip when he was woken with the news of the attack by a phone call from Southport Sharks manager Paul White.

“I turned the TV on, all I could see was devastation and people running to and fro, and a lot of screaming going on and fire,” he said.

“(Paul) said to me, “We’ve located all the boys but we can’t find Billy.”

Jess was in Melbourne and woke after a night out with friends to see missed calls from her father on her mobile phone.

Both flew back to the Gold Coast but did not initially fear the worse, given many of Billy’s teammates were already accounted for.

Bill recalls: “Our hopes were still high even though we were pretty devastated by what we were seeing, because what we were seeing on the news was just fire and brimstone, basically.”

Days began to pass and Billy was still unaccounted for, despite fleeting stories of sightings.

“There were people coming forward saying there were sightings of my brother,” Jess remembered.

“They said, ‘Oh we caught up with him here and we saw him at this place and that place.” And then when we mentioned that to the Australian Federal Police, they said, ‘Unfortunately this brings out the best and the worst of people these kinds of tragedies’.

“Some people want to feel like their missionaries and they’ve helped in some way, even though they haven’t.”

The Hardy family even consulted a psychic who insisted Billy was still alive.

The family was flown to Bali by the federal government and searched for Billy to no avail before returning home.

“It’s an out of body experience, even recalling it now, I feel like I was not even there during that time,” Jess recalls.

“I just didn’t want to know the reality of it. I felt like I knew it was happening, but I felt so empty and just my head was not on during that time. Because I just thought one day we’d get the news that he’d returned from a holiday.”

It took six agonising weeks for his remains to be identified.

They were found in the ruins of the Sari Club.

Billy is gone but his legacy lives on, with the award for the best playing in the QAFL Reserve Grade grand final named in his honour.

His bronzed boots and jersey both remain at the Sharks’ headquarters.

Bill presents the award annually

“When I made the presentation this year, I looked at most of the boys and they weren’t even born when it happened,” he said.

“So I want to keep the memory not only for Billy, but the other Australians who got killed … the 202 people, 88 Australians who got killed.

“I want to keep their memory alive too, not only Billy’s memory.”

ANDREW CSABI

THE smell of the bomb blast which changed Andrew Csabi’s life forever is still imprinted in his nostrils.

The Main Beach businessman was inside the Sari Club in Bali on the holiday of a lifetime when a car bomb detonated outside the popular westerner bar, annihilating everything in its path.

The “filthy, dirty cloud of chloride sulphur” hit Mr Csabi moments before the blast sent him hurling to the floor.

“When I woke back up, I was on the dance floor somewhere and I looked down at my left leg and it was at right angles and I looked down my right foot, my toes were blown off,” he recalled this week.

“I tried to stand up and couldn’t so I did the only thing I could do, and that’s crawl.

“There was 12 of us on our table to begin with and then five died.

“There were a couple of girls next to me. They were like flame trees. Everyone was on fire. “There was dead bodies, there was body parts around me and I’m crawling through and over people. It’s horrific and it’s not something you’re ever going to forget.”

Casting his mind back 20 years to the events of October 12, 2002, Mr Csabi said the carnage he witnessed was beyond comprehension.

Powered by adrenaline and willpower he began crawling to get out of the club.

“I tried to stand up and couldn’t so I did the only thing I could do, and that’s crawled. But somehow the nightclub was engulfed in flames and I’m just crawling away from the heat

“I remember falling down the crater in the front of the club and an off-duty soldier, Anthony McKay dragged me across the road and then they put me on a piece of corrugated iron and then took me down the lane way down away from the burning nightclub.”

Despite being in excruciating pain, Mr Csabi says he was wide awake as he was dragged away from the scene.

“Being moved on that sheet of corrugated iron, was a trip down the road I’m never going to forget,” he said.

“My leg was shattered and my foot was hanging over the edge of the corrugated sheet and I’m trying to lean up and pick my leg up and put it back on.

“I’m trying to sit up and they’re pushing me back down but the pain was the worst pain you’re ever going to experience. I’m never going to forget that moment.”

Mr Csabi had his left leg amputated above the ankle and lost his right foot.

Despite his injures, the father and businessman has lived a busy life – continuing to operate his security consulting business, fishing and travelling.

In 2012 he wrote his autobiography, Bom Bali: Life after Death.

Not willing to dwell on the events of 2002, Mr Csabi insists he’s not a victim – he’s a survivor and he has used his experiences to help others.

“Emotionally the scars are still there, what you witnessed, what you saw. I miss my friends that I lost that night and of course I miss my lifestyle, having your limbs and being able to play football and be able to do a lot of things,” he said.

“So I’ve had to adapt, evolve, and make some changes in my life according to my injuries. “It’s paramount to me to live my life to the full, enjoying myself because nearly everything got taken away from me.

“I’m lucky enough to work with other amputees as well. So if my surgeon tells me that someone’s about to lose a limb or lost limb, sometimes I go and assist.

“I’ll sit down and talk to them, might give them a copy of my book and try and motivate them. After all, what’s happened to me is not life ending.

“It’s just something that you need to come to turn with and deal with and then move forward on it.”

GLENN COSMAN

A GOLD cross hangs around the neck of Glenn Cosman as a constant reminder of how close he came to dying.

Embedded at the centre of the cross is a jagged piece of rusting metal pulled from the Gold Coast real estate agent’s leg after he survived the 2002 Bali bombing.

“(The doctors) didn’t find it till the week after I got back (from Bali),” he said.

“I was having trouble walking, and then they decided to do an X-ray and found it.

“It’s something that I’ve got that just reminds me how lucky I am to be alive, and how close I came.

“And that’s something that helps me remember how lucky I am for every day.”

Mr Cosman was 33 years old on October 12, 2002 when he travelled to Bali for a holiday with close friends Andrew Csabi and Glenn Forster.

The trio was inside the Sari Club late that Saturday evening when the first explosion occurred in the neighbouring Paddy’s Bar. Moments later a car bomb detonated outside the club.

He described the experience as being “like waking up in the middle of a bushfire”.

“Waking up in the Sari Club, I don’t know if I was knocked out or what but the Sari Club’s roof dropped down and was instantly on fire,” he said.

“It was incredibly terrifying because of the sights, and the sounds, and obviously the fire (but) the clothes I was wearing was what saved my life.

“I was wearing a cotton shirt and cotton shorts and really good leather deck shoes, so I was actually able to walk out through the fire.

Despite hearing damage and leg wounds from the shrapnel, Mr Cosman helped carry Mr Forster out of the building and gave first aid, while helping other wounded victims of the blast, including fellow Gold Coaster Ben Tullipan.

Mr Cosman and other survivors broke into the ruins of nearby shops, grabbing water bottles and surf T-shirts to use as bandages.

Within hours, they were evacuated from the scene in the back of a hosed-out rubbish truck to a hospital which was overwhelmed by the carnage.

“They were out of everything, that absolutely were using the curtains for bandages and pillows,” Mr Cosman said.

“So, there was nothing there at all, they had no pain killers, so they transferred us on the back of the ute to Siloam Hospital.”

Both Mr Forster and Mr Csabi survived the blast with serious injuries and were evacuated on a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Hercules

Mr Cosman flew out of Bali the following night on a federal government-chartered Qantas flight.

Despite the events of October 2002, Mr Cosman has returned to Bali for dozens of holidays in the past 20 years.

However that night still plays on the father-of-three’s mind.

“The memories are still as good and as crystal clear as day one but I’ve always felt myself very, very lucky to have survived and very fortunate, and every day’s a great day, so I love living,” he said.

“You always question what you did and how you did it, and what could you have done different.

“You know, certainly I was there when many people passed away and my voice was the last one a lot of people heard.

“So yeah, it does (play on my mind), but it is what it is, and what happened, happened.”

Despite this, Mr Cosman said he maintains a positive attitude and said he taken the phrase “every day is a good day” as his personal motto.

“An old World War II vet once said it to me, said, ‘Every day’s a good day, mate, try missing one.”

andrew.potts@news.com.au