Twenty years after photographing the aftermath of a tsunami, I still check for high ground at the beach

Trudging across the stinking, sweltering wasteland I see a small scurrying figure sifting through the crushed remains of homes. A little boy wipes his face and looks up at me, a wispy-bearded white man with a camera. I photograph him. He goes back to looking for something – it could be his family, or food. In the distance, smoke plumes rise from a city starting to burn after a mortal wound. The tsunami, like a titanic bulldozer, has pushed its way kilometres inland, with destroyed buildings and ships acting as its blade.

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This is a recollection of my experience covering the Asian tsunami as an Australian photographer in Banda Aceh. Other photographer friends who also covered this horrific disaster in Indonesia included Mike Bowers, Kate Geraghty, Dean Sewell and Mick Tsikas. Jason South from The Age went to Sri Lanka; Tamara Dean and Andrew Taylor went to Thailand.

It was a pretty big deal – 230,000 people died in the end. However, for me, it started on Boxing Day. The two picture editors on at the time were Andrew Meares and Dan Adams. The first earthquake at the tip of Sumatra was recorded as a high 8 on the Richter scale and later upgraded to 9.1, but the only pictures on the wires were coming out from Thailand.

Bodies lie in the streets of Meulaboh. Credit: Nick Moir

We came to the opinion that the reason we weren’t seeing anything was because Indonesia had been hit so hard they weren’t able to get stuff out. So Mearsey told me to pack my bags and I was on a flight to Jakarta that night.

The next day I managed to get to Medan in Sumatra, the closest viable airport. Somewhere in Medan I was pickpocketed and lost my credit card, so I was down to $US500 in cash. I met with Lindsay Murdoch, our correspondent out of Thailand. Lindsay had managed to find a light plane headed to Meulaboh, which was further south-east down the coast from Banda Aceh. The little 12-seater two-engine aircraft piloted by a German was making a voluntary flight with food and water. Dodging cattle and huge cracks in the tarmac, we made a hairy landing.

The local management of a nearby plantation of some sort took us into the remains of the city. Accompanied by a CNN cameraman, Lindsay and I were stunned by the destruction. We were standing on the remains of an Indonesian army base. The base and much of the city are on a pointed peninsula and essentially the wave wiped it clean from one side to the other. We wandered in the baking heat and came across a distraught Indonesian army commander.

Using broken English and Indonesian he recounted seeing the wave approach; he climbed a coconut palm and rode out the tsunami from the top of the tree while his entire base was wiped out. He was sobbing and telling us his tale as we recorded his pain. I hugged the poor guy and we parted ways. We stayed there for most of the day and flew to the surfing island retreat of Nias. Returning to Medan, I met up with Herald reporter Anne Davies, who was briefly filling in for Matthew Moore as South-East Asian correspondent.

Getting off the rear ramp of a RAAF C-130 in the late evening onto the broken airport runway of Banda Aceh, I carried about 40 kilograms of food and water as well as camera gear. I got an amazing and surprising welcome from the smiling face of old mate Mick Tsikas from AAP. After dropping my gear at a house that Mick had found, he and his reporter happily agreed to have me share the costs in return for a place to sleep. We immediately started wandering through the devastation but returned to sleep a few hours later. As soon as we heard the call to prayer, at dawn, we made our way into what was left of Banda Aceh, smoking “Gudang” clove cigarettes to try to limit the stench of the thousands of bodies.

Bodies were strewn in the streets for days and weeks afterwards.Credit: Nick Moir

The first Australian and US military doctors were arriving and assisting the Indonesian military and local hospitals with the thousands of wounded. Punctured bodies, broken limbs, amputations and the ever-growing threat of dysentery and cholera kept them busy. Alongside the Western and Indonesian military were volunteers of hardline Islamist groups who were normally enemies but were now working peacefully together for humanity. It was deeply moving.

All the straight lines were destroyed – the ground was a tipped-up puzzle box. Colours and pieces were everywhere. I have chosen black-and-white to display these images as it focuses the readers’ attention on the faces and familiar shapes among the chaos. It lets the emotion rise above the explosion of patterns and colours of the wreckage.

Some of the survivors amid the debris.Credit: Nick Moir

One of the most well-known features of the decapitated city was the “Bridge of Death”. The flotsam and jetsam of hundreds of bloated corpses were cuddled together with other debris around the bridge pylons of the Aceh River. Excavators, boats and soldiers with ropes pulled them from the water where an imam would give them holy rites before burial. This sight was incredibly brutal and is probably the most profound memory of my weeks there.

An Indonesian soldier retrieves a body from water beneath the bridge in Banda Aceh.Credit: Nick Moir

Each day Matthew Moore, who had now arrived, and I would travel closer to the suburbs nearest the ocean – always with the threat of aftershocks and tsunamis in our minds. As the print deadlines for the Herald were in the afternoon, we had to have our stories written, photographed and filed using the meagre phone reception available by midday local time (Sydney is four hours ahead). This put limitations on how far we could get from our base. It was one afternoon as I randomly explored the no man’s land that I encountered the young boy; then a separate father and mother searching for lost children, a mother looking over the remains of her home and a father who lost five sons, with a lost stare of profound shock.

A family cries after hearing they have lost loved ones in Banda Aceh. They were waiting hopefully at the airport. Credit: Nick Moir

Each couple of days we would head back to Medan and collect canned food and water for ourselves and to hand out to those we encountered. Our own health was becoming an issue as mosquito bites and cuts became infected while we made our way through flooded streets. We would wash each night and I would use disinfectant all over.

Every now and then a colleague would arrive. Fellow Herald photographer Kate Geraghty and I found each other as we photographed US marine helicopters transporting patients covered in burns and wounds from further down the coast. A giant US Marine amphibious ship was off the coast providing assistance. Freelancer Dean Sewell arrived – Dean was a close friend of both Mick and I and it was a great relief to have two friends with me. We would tell each other the bizarre tales of each day’s exploration over a late-night meal.

One evening, as I prepared to head to Medan, a deep moan and abrupt shaking panicked the refugees on the tarmac. Many rushed out to waiting aircraft not ready to take them. Later that night a jet hit a cow when landing, damaging its landing gear and ploughing into rice fields. It was chaos. One of these huge aftershocks occurred while I slept – Dean and Mick told me that everyone else ran out of the house as it hit, but they forgot to get me. Jerks!

Panicked scenes at the airport.Credit: Nick Moir

Finally, after a few weeks, I was recalled and Mike Bowers took over the position in Banda Aceh. I said my goodbyes and flew to Singapore only to find my flight to Sydney had never been confirmed by the travel company. I had about $20 and was at my mental limit. Stressed, exhausted and frankly, very smelly, I desperately rang and emailed Sydney. My partner at the time was about to buy a business class ticket to get me back when Mearsey bashed some heads and got my seat confirmed.

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It was a bit of a blur after that, discovering Alexa Moses, one of our young journalists, had been in Thailand with her husband and had endured the violence of the wave as it ripped apart her beachfront resort. She then began reporting from the scene. Not long after that she left journalism and is now a children’s book author.

Being back in “reality” in Australia was weird. Herald management at the time organised a group therapy session with an inexperienced counsellor involving the photographers and reporters who had been sent. It just annoyed everybody. Nobody wanted to acknowledge they had any trauma or even realised if they did. But we all knew one 45-minute session seemed more of a box-ticking gesture and I came out disappointed at the flippancy our mental health was given.

Even now, 20 years later, I instinctively look at the horizon when I am at the beach, and I check for high ground without realising what I’m doing. Ridiculous, but there it is.