Kristie Webster relives the devastating Bali bombings that killed her mum
Kristie Webster has relived the horror of the night of the Bali bombings — and the moment her mother was killed.
It’s been 20 years since the Bali bombings, but for Kristie Webster “it still feels like yesterday”.
She was one of a group of teenage girls dancing inside The Sari Club when her mum Robyn told her to start saying her goodbyes as they were going to head back to the hotel in five minutes.
Then, just minutes later, when they were still inside The Sari Club, a suicide bomber inside the pub across the road detonated a bomb.
20 seconds later, a second and more powerful bomb, which was hidden inside a van parked outside The Sari Club, was detonated by another suicide bomber.
Kristie was one of the 209 people injured in the blasts in Kuta. Her mum, Robyn, was one of the 202 people killed.
Kristie rarely gives interviews about what happened that night in Bali, but agreed to speak to news.com.au’s podcast, I’ve Got News For You, to pay tribute to her mum ahead of the 20th anniversary of her death.
“We went over there to celebrate and have a good time and just let my mum escape reality,” Kristie said about their 2002 holiday.
It had been a tough few months for the Webster family.
Kristie had an accident while competing in the Australian surf lifesaving titles, and her older sister, Brianna, was receiving treatment for a cancerous tumour in her arm and was unable to travel.
“My dad said to my mum, ‘listen, you’ve been through so much, why don’t you and Kristie go away, take your friends, and go and make a family holiday,’” Kristie said.
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For two weeks, Kristie and her mum soaked up the sun in Bali with their mates, until it was finally time to head home to Australia.
“We weren’t even supposed to be in Bali that last night (October 12), our flights had been cancelled,” Kristie said.
With their holiday unexpectedly extended, Kristie and her mum went shopping.
“We ran into the girls while we were shopping, and they all said, ‘let’s go to The Sari Club’ and my mum was like, ‘let’s do it, let’s go!’”
The atmosphere inside the club that night was “electric”, Kristie said.
They ran into more friends from Sydney, spent hours on the dance floor, and even had a few drinks despite the fact Kristie was only 15 at the time.
At around 11pm, Robyn told her daughter to start saying her goodbyes as they were going to head back to the hotel in five minutes.
Then, at 11.05pm when they were still inside The Sari Club, a suicide bomber inside the pub across the road detonated a bomb.
At the time, Kristie, her mum and their friends were unaware what had happened.
“We just thought that a speaker had blown and that the music was going to come back on momentarily,” Kristie said. “We had no idea of what was about to happen next.”
20 seconds later, a more powerful bomb which was hidden inside a van parked outside The Sari Club, was detonated by another suicide bomber.
The blast knocked Kristie unconscious for several minutes.
“I just remember being pinned down by debris,” Kristie told news.com.au. “I was trapped underneath everything and was just trying to get out.”
She managed to get free and made her way to the back of the club where there was a brick wall.
“I could just hear the roars of flames, I could hear screams. I just didn’t know what to do or where to look,” she said.
“People were screaming from a roof above, ‘just give us your hands, give us your hands.’ and we tried to reach up and they were just pulling us over these walls.
“I remember looking down … I had no bottoms on, no shoes, they’d all ripped off,” she recalled.
Kristie’s back was badly burned and her top lip had been blown off by the force of the bomb, but a rush of adrenaline helped her make her way onto the road outside The Sari Club.
“Everything was so surreal,” she said about the scene on the street. “I just remember it just being like a bomb site, literally, and people were screaming and running.”
A pair of brothers from Perth, Michael and Anthony, spotted a dazed and confused Kristie stumbling out of the club and they rushed to help her.
“I passed out as soon as they picked me up,” Kristie said.
The brothers took Kristie to a nearby hospital but they were turned away because it was full, so they headed back to one of their hotel rooms and waited for a doctor to visit.
“I just kept saying, ‘where’s my mum? What’s going on? Where am I?’”
A doctor came but couldn’t treat Kristie’s serious injuries, so the brothers took her to a police medical centre out of town.
“They made the phone call to my dad,” Kristie said. “I just remember him saying, ‘put my daughter on the phone, put my daughter on.’
“The first thing he said was, ‘what were you doing in a nightclub?’ I can hear that voice in my head right now.”
After receiving treatment, the brothers took Kristie back to her hotel where they started arranging the paperwork so that she could be on the first medical evacuation flight back to Australia.
At one stage, Kristie went to reception to see if her mum had left her any messages, and she was initially relieved when the staff handed her a bunch of notes.
“(But) it was all the messages I had left for my mum,” Kristie said. “I thought she was out there still looking for me, and I still had hope.”
Kristie, still unsure about her mum’s condition or whereabouts, boarded an evacuation flight to Sydney where she was then taken to hospital for treatment.
Meanwhile, forensics teams were dispatched to her family home where they took DNA samples from Robyn’s belongings to assist with the identification process of those who were either injured or killed in the attack.
As the days dragged on, Kristie and her family started to realise that the chances of Robyn being found alive were slim.
“My mum was one of the last people to be identified,” Kristie said. “The police came to our door and then I just remember our dad sitting us down … And they confirmed that my mum had been identified and her flight would be arriving home with her coffin in a couple of days.”
Ever since that day, Kristie says she’s been living with an “emptiness”.
“There’s this void in me that I will never get to see my mum again,” she said. “I’ll never get to hug her. She’ll never get to meet my kids. My wedding day, my mum never got to be there and get me ready. All those little things that we take for granted. They’re the big things. They’re the things that matter the most and the things that I never got to experience.
“She was beautiful. She was an entertainer. She was always the life of a party. She was my inspiration. She was my hero, my best friend.”
Kristie hasn’t returned to Bali since 2002, partly because her dad doesn’t want her to, but she told the I’ve Got News For You podcast that she thinks she’s finally ready to visit again.
“This year was probably the first year that it really hit me that and I was like, ‘I’m doing it, I want to go.’ But I just need to make sure the timing is right,” she said.
“I believe that there would be some sort of closure for me. As soon as I’m ready, I’ll do it.”
Kristie also spoke on the podcast about the news that Umar Patek, the man who built the bombs used in the deadly attack, might be released from prison this month, despite having served just half of his sentence.
“I’ve got no emotion … I don’t hold hatred or anything like that,” she said.
“What they did was wrong and what they did affected so many other people, but it’s not gonna bring back our mum.”
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