‘I hear a soft moaning’: Inside the chaos of the 2004 Jakarta embassy bombing

This story is part of the July 26 edition of Good Weekend.See all 15 stories.

Deafness is a curious thing. It can be quite disconcerting. It’s only when you lose your hearing that you truly understand the stark reality that silence itself can be deafening.

It’s this unaccustomed silence that first occupies my mind as I lie prostrate on the floor. I’m confused as to how I got here. One second, I’m turning to say ­goodbye to Serina, the wife of an embassy staffer; the next, there’s a loud bang, and I’m lying on the ground gasping for air as if someone has just given me a sharp jab to the solar plexus. But as I lie here looking at the ceiling, trying to catch my breath, it’s the silence that’s most perplexing. My world is deathly silent, like I’m suspended in time and space. Am I asleep? Am I dreaming?

Then I’m jolted back into the real world by a sharp, acrid, pungent smell. Not strong enough to burn my nostrils but unpleasant enough to make my eyes smart. I slowly struggle to my feet and am confronted with a scene of utter bedlam. The air is full of thick smoke, and I can see flames in the distance through a shattered window. But it’s the people rushing silently past and all around me, in and out of the smoke, that I find truly surreal. I feel like an extra in some grainy 1920s silent film. What the f--- is going on?

Finally, the fog of shock clouding my brain starts to clear, and I begin to piece together the sights and smells assailing my senses.

Shit! We’ve been bombed!

With that realisation, I stagger back into Serina’s office. The air is full of dust, and wires and panels are dangling from the ceiling above. I can see Serina sitting motionless behind her desk, her eyes as big as saucers. She’s obviously in shock. I ask her if she is OK, but can’t even hear the words come out of my mouth. Something obviously came out because she gives me a slow nod in return.

Having confirmed Serina’s safety, my mind instantly shifts to my wife, Kristan. Her office is on the same floor, towards the back of the building. Heart pounding, I quickly turn and rush out of Serina’s office.

I arrive at Kristan’s office to find her standing in the doorway, confused but unharmed. The sense of relief is instant and overwhelming. Nearly in tears, I grab her, hugging her tightly. Kristan hugs me just as tightly. From her stunned look, it’s obvious she hasn’t a clue what’s transpired. Her mouth starts to move, but the words are barely audible.

‘Parts of the ceiling fell down. What’s going on?’

“I can’t hear you. Yell in my ear.”

“I was in my office,” she shouts into my right ear. “I heard a bang and the whole building shook. Parts of the ceiling fell down. What’s going on?”

“It’s a bomb … We’ve been bombed.” Saying the words doesn’t make it any less surreal.

“Oh, my god.”

I hug her tight once again, just as her boss, Graeme, appears. He is the senior administrative officer and the first person I have seen exuding calm since the bomb exploded minutes earlier. He says something to Kristan, largely inaudible to me.

Kristan then turns and shouts in my ear, “Graeme wants you to go down to the security office and tell Pete to make an announcement over the PA for everyone to evacuate to the basement.”

I give Graeme a short nod. “Understood. Will do.”

Then I give Kristan a quick smile. She’s close to tears. I squeeze her hand.

“Everything will be all right, darling. I’ll see you down in the basement.”

Grant Dooley and wife Kristan at the Australian embassy ball five days before the blast, the first in a run of events that rocked their family.Credit: Courtesy of Grant Dooley

Turning, I open the door to the internal stairwell ­opposite Kristan’s office. As I rush down the stairs to the security office in the main lobby, I feel a huge weight lifting off my shoulders. Kristan’s safe. But it’s not only a physical sense of release I feel. It’s as if someone has flicked a switch in my mind. The confusion and apprehension since the explosion have dissipated, ­replaced by a much-needed clarity of thinking.

I open the door at the bottom of the stairwell to ­discover that the explosion has demolished the front entrance to the chancery. My improving hearing picks up distant screams and cries for help. From the ­carnage, it’s evident the bomb was detonated right outside the front of the embassy.

Covering my mouth and nose, I quickly walk over to the side door of the security office and give it a sharp bang. No response. Yelling Pete’s name, I bang the door again, but there’s still no response. I grab the door ­handle and turn it. The door’s unlocked, so I push it open and enter.

In front of me, Pete’s sitting, hunched over on the floor. He doesn’t appear injured, but from his wide-eyed, unblinking stare, he’s clearly deep in shock. Given what he must have witnessed just minutes before, as the explosion demolished the front of the embassy, it’s hardly surprising.

I squat down in front of him. “Pete, are you OK?” At first, my question, and even my presence, doesn’t appear to register. Placing my hand on his shoulder, I ask again, “Are you OK, mate?”

This time, Pete breaks his stare and looks up, straight into my eyes. But while my presence may have registered, from the blank look in his eyes, it’s clear his mind is a million miles away. “Beverly!” he shouts, jumping up, before bolting out of the office in search of his wife.

“Shit,” I say under my breath, looking at the public-address system in the electrical cabinet next to me. All I can see is a confusing patchwork of switches, plugs and dials. While I study the PA, pondering which switch to flick or dial to turn, Pete re-enters. “Graeme wants everyone to evacuate to the basement. Can you make a broadcast over the PA?” I hurriedly ask.

I recall the anguished cries for help and screams I’d heard just a few minutes prior. Friends? Colleagues? Innocent bystanders?

“Yeah, sure,” Pete responds, moving over to the electrical cabinet. He flicks a couple of switches before grabbing the microphone and broadcasting the requested message. As I listen to the sound of Pete’s voice echo throughout the building, I spot a couple of first aid bags on the floor underneath the counter. I open the first bag to find a ventilator, oxygen mask and small oxygen ­bottle; the second holds an assortment of bandages.

As I rummage through the bags, I recall the anguished cries for help and screams I’d heard just a few minutes prior. Friends? Colleagues? Innocent bystanders?

I grab the bags and exit the security office. The thick smoke once again forces me to cover my mouth and nose as I slowly make my way through the tangled mess of broken glass, metal and concrete towards the chancery’s front entrance.

At the entrance, a pile of debris where the glass doors once stood blocks my exit. I clamber over the twisted metal and concrete rubble, before tripping face down onto the ground, cutting my hand and dropping the first aid bags. Carefully regaining my feet, I pick up the bags and stagger out into the large, curved portico area that covers the chancery’s entrance.

---

What confronts me is a hellish scene of devastation and destruction. Thick, heavy, black smoke clouds the air, turning morning to surrealistic dusk. Through it, I can see a large hole in the steel fence that separates the embassy from Jalan Rasuna Said [one of Jakarta’s main avenues]. On the road itself, multiple fires burn fiercely. A large military truck is engulfed in flames and belching black smoke. Twisted pieces of green metal, shorn from the embassy fence, lie scattered over the ground.

To my right sits a badly damaged embassy vehicle, its front end and roof crushed by heavy steel window frames and chunks of concrete, blown out from the windows above. I quickly check inside the car for injured colleagues and am relieved to find it empty.

Then I hear a soft moaning. It appears to be coming from the garden area in front of the chancery that separates the building from the front fence. I dash down a set of stairs to my right, entering the garden.

Peering through the smoke, I discern a figure on the edge of the garden’s small pond. As I get closer, I recognise Johno, my DFAT colleague, fellow Bintang [local AFL club member] and all-round good guy. He is struggling to drag a limp figure from the pond’s water. Cautiously navigating my way through the tangled mess of vegetation, I arrive at Johno’s side. “Let me help you, mate.” I place the first aid bags on the ground and grab one arm of the motionless body. Johno turns and looks at me but doesn’t say a word. His eyes have a blank stare.

Together we pull, dragging the limp body clear of the water. I’m shocked to discover it’s the embassy gardener, Suryadi, a gentle soul with whom I often practised my ­limited Bahasa while my language instructor took a smoko. Suryadi is alive, just. A quick scan of his body doesn’t reveal any obvious injuries, but his heavy wheezing indicates he’s struggling to breathe. I grab the first aid bag and pull out the face mask and small oxygen tank. Cradling his head, I place the mask on his face and turn on the tank.

Suddenly, Suryadi starts convulsing in my arms, his oxygen mask full of foam. I rip off the mask, revealing a steady stream of foamy bubbles flowing from his mouth. He must have severe internal trauma, no doubt caused by the force of the blast. He’s in desperate need of proper medical attention.

Grant Dooley (centre) helps carry embassy gardener Suryadi to an ambulance.Credit: AFP via Getty Images

As I cradle Suryadi, the anguished cries of others become clearly audible. I start to panic. What do I do? Do I stay with Suryadi until help arrives? Or do I go to help the other injured victims in front of the embassy? I’m so close, their tortured cries begin to haunt me.

A couple of guys from the embassy’s defence section arrive. With their own medical kits, they are better prepared to care for Suryadi. (Later, I returned to find Suryadi still alive, barely breathing, and with some embassy colleagues helped lift his limp body onto a steel gurney and carry it to the waiting ambulance.)

Picking up the first aid bag containing the bandages, I start running towards the small security post at the front gate. Entering the severely damaged security post via the back door, I find my way blocked by the wreckage of the bag X-ray machine and other debris. I clear a path and scramble through the front entrance onto the embassy driveway. Everywhere I look, I see the dead, the mutilated, the dying. My small bag of bandages is hopelessly inadequate.

A short distance in front of me, the mangled torsos of dead Indonesian security officers, some missing arms or legs or both, lie spread across the driveway, their bodies distorted into unnatural arrangements like crumpled rag dolls. On the road itself, a motor­cycle is on fire, its rider trapped screaming and burning ­beneath. To the right of that is what appears to be a large bomb crater, and more charred bodies, some still smouldering.

I cover her body with some metal sheeting; dignity in death is the most I can offer.

A muffled moan at my feet snaps me out of my state of frightened paralysis. It’s a small girl with a large gash bleeding profusely from her side. As I squat down and reach into my bag for a bandage, an Indonesian man appears out of nowhere, scoops her up in his arms and whisks her away, to the medical clinic just down the road, I hope.

The girl now gone, I see a woman, her face, naked torso and legs badly disfigured, lying about a foot away. I reach down to check her pulse, more for confirmation than hope. She’s dead. I cover her body with some metal sheeting; dignity in death is the most I can offer. I hear someone howling in pain from the direction of a shattered police security post, about 10 metres away.

As I get close, I realise the anguished sound is ­emanating from the open drain behind the post. But before I reach it, another Indonesian man appears. Kneeling down, he lunges into the drain, as if to pick something up. He emerges holding a shorn-off arm, which he places on the ground next to him. He then reaches back in and pulls a critically injured policeman, minus an arm, over the lip of the drain and onto the footpath. Another two men suddenly appear, ­picking up the injured policeman and carrying him away, trailed by the original rescuer bearing the ­detached arm.

As I watch them go, my vision widens to reveal a large crowd of onlookers gathered on Jalan Rasuna Said about 20 metres away. Just standing there, ­silently. Turning slowly to my right, I find I’m surrounded by hundreds of these silent, motionless sentinels.

Dooley covers the body of a bike rider who died in the blast.Credit: AFP via Getty Images

Out of the corner of my right eye, I again see the burning motorcycle, its rider still trapped. I grab some shredded tarpaulin from the shattered frame of the police post, hoping to douse the fire and pull the rider clear. But as I get close, the blistered and charred skin of the motionless rider indicates how futile this probably is. Undeterred, I cover the motorcycle with the tarpaulin, successfully smothering the fire, and then start a hopeful search for the rider’s pulse. First the neck and then his limp wrist. Nothing.

One of the bystanders approaches me, newspaper in hand. He unfolds it, handing me some sheets. Silently, we cover the rider’s scorched remains. As we do so, out of nowhere, an Indonesian policeman accosts me. Yelling and waving his arms, he’s obviously not happy. But I have no idea what he’s saying. Then he starts pointing at the embassy, bellowing, “Go, go, go,” in staccato English. I’m not sure if he’s concerned about my safety or just annoyed with my presence. But the message is clear: Go!

And it appears he may not be the only one who wants me to leave. The large and growing crowd of bystanders is starting to get edgy. Once deathly silent, a low rumble is now clearly audible and growing with intensity, interspersed with the odd angry shout. I’m not sure who the anger is directed at, but the tension in the air is palpable.

Suddenly, I feel very vulnerable. Who’s to say some of the terrorists who perpetrated the bombing, or at least those sympathetic to their cause, are not dotted throughout the large crowd now surrounding me? The mere thought sets my pulse racing, triggering a quick dash back across the road towards the embassy gate.

The crowd has now swelled into the hundreds, and the police are struggling to keep them under control. The situation is volatile.

I take a deep breath, closing my eyes. I’m exhausted. The adrenaline that has sustained me in the aftermath of the blast is ebbing away. And then I cry. First softly, before descending into body-shaking sobs, my face buried deep in my hands. My emotions finally unlocked by the tragedy that surrounds me. Dead. They’re all bloody dead. I couldn’t save anyone. What was I thinking? Me and a small bag of bandages. What a failure. What a f---ing failure.

---

Eleven dead, including the suicide bomber, and more than 200 injured, some critically, was the ­bombing’s grim tally. Of the victims, two were ­embassy workers, including, to my great distress, the gardener Suryadi. The other was Sujarwo, a 23-year-old security guard stationed outside the embassy’s front gate alongside his Indonesian police counterparts, of whom four died. Of the remaining victims, innocent bystanders all, two were the young Indonesian mother whose body I covered on the embassy driveway, and the Indonesian motorcycle rider whose body I also covered on the road out front. Both had been in the wrong place at the wrong time: the mother waiting in the visa line with her young daughter, and the motorcycle rider ­unlucky enough to be passing the embassy when the truck bomb detonated.

The bombing was a seminal moment in my life’s journey. How could it not be? One doesn’t experience such trauma without it leaving an indelible scar on one’s soul. My life would never be the same again.

Unfortunately, the bombing was just one terrible disaster in a series of disastrous events that would ­consume me, Kristan and our young family in the next few years. The 2004 Boxing Day tsunami that devastated the northern Indonesian province of Aceh, killing, maiming and displacing hundreds of thousands, was the next major catastrophe. This was followed by bomb threats, being caught in an Islamist militant riot and the discovery of a terrorist website detailing the “best places to assassinate Australian diplomats”. If normality existed in Jakarta, it did so only in the short interludes between the end of one unexpected crisis and the onset of the next.

But somehow, we persevered. Personal resilience, the ­support of friends and colleagues in the expatriate and embassy communities and black humour all played their part. Such antidotes, however, can only sustain one for so long. By early 2007, the grinding pressure of Jakarta’s unpredictable and inherently dangerous security environment had taken its toll. Our nerves were shot. The problem was we were in denial and determined to serve out the remaining months of our posting to Jakarta.

Given my proximity to the bombing and plane crash, it was hardly surprising that I suffered a severe panic attack.

The crash of Garuda Flight 200 in Yogyakarta on March 7, 2007, changed all that. The crash killed 21, including five friends and embassy colleagues. I was supposed to be on the plane. But, in a twist of fate, I made a late decision to change my flight and flew to Yogyakarta the day before. I arrived at the airport shortly after the disaster and went straight to the crash site with the hope that all, or at least some of my friends and colleagues, had survived. It was a forlorn hope. I spent the rest of the morning next to the plane’s burning wreck, waiting for their bodies to be recovered and co-ordinating the search for Australian survivors in the nearby hospitals. I’m still haunted by what I heard and witnessed on that longest of days.

Given my close proximity to the bombing, plane crash and other traumatic events, it was hardly ­surprising that I suffered a severe panic attack in October 2019. The strange thing is, when the attack occurred, it was quite unexpected. To be sure, in the immediate aftermath of each of these terrible events I had experienced semi-regular bouts of nightmares. But these had waned over time, to the point where I had convinced myself that, somehow, I had escaped the trauma of Jakarta unscathed. The 2019 panic attack brought that little fallacy crashing down, and I had no choice but to confront the hard reality of my fragile mental state. Writing Bomb Season in Jakarta was a giant cathartic step in my rebuilding process.

One question I often get asked is: could the embassy bombing happen again? It would be easy to say yes. Parts of Indonesian society still support radical Islamic conservatism. But the answer is not that simple, and there is ample cause for hope. At the time of the bombing in 2004, Australia’s relationship with Indonesia was fractious. Suspicions abounded on both sides due to a series of historical events that had plagued the bilateral relationship. For Australia, the fate of the Balibo Five [five Australian-based journalists who were killed in East Timor in 1975] continued to stir deep passions, while Australia’s ­intervention in East Timor in the late ’90s was a major irritant for the Indonesians.

The terrible spate of bombings in the early 2000s, particularly the Bali and embassy bombings, and Australia’s generosity in the wake of the devastation wrought on Aceh by the Boxing Day tsunami, while tragic, were the circuit-breakers the bilateral relationship sorely needed. On the former, the Australian Federal Police’s concerted effort to forge an effective working relationship with their Indonesian counterparts directly resulted in the arrests or deaths of the key radical Islamist leaders behind the bombings and the long-term degradation of their networks. And the Howard government’s decision, alongside the outpouring of compassion from the Australian public, to contribute $1 billion for the reconstruction of Aceh was an outstretched hand of friendship that recast the bilateral relationship in an instant.

As a result of these terrible events, and Australia and Indonesia’s joint efforts in response, the two countries have been able to develop a level of mutual trust that was previously absent. It’s a hard-won trust that sustains the mature bilateral relationship we have today and provides important ballast when managing the periodic tensions that invariably arise.

Adapted extract from Bomb Season in Jakarta by Grant Dooley (Affirm Press, $37), out July 29.

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