Bali bombings 20th anniversary: Tracey Ball and sister Melinda Kemp recall torturous separation after blast

For two close Perth sisters, the agony of being separated for hours after surviving the Sari Club bombing was excruciating, not knowing whether the other was alive or dead. Tracey Ball, her daughter Brianna and her younger sibling Melinda Kemp had jetted off to Bali for a holiday, excited to have some family time together after four years of grieving. Tracey’s policeman husband, Peter Ball, had died in the line of duty in 1998, struck by a passing vehicle while restraining a suspected car thief in Cannington. The sister’s parents came too and on that fateful Saturday night, they had all been out for dinner before the pair charged on to see the nightlife in bustling Kuta. “We were supposed to go to Paddy’s Bar but when we got there, it was almost empty so we just followed sounds and walked up the road to the Sari Club,” Ms Ball said. Around 11pm, they were moments away from leaving the venue - feeling too jostled around on the packed dancefloor - when they heard a massive explosion tear through Paddy’s. “We just saw this huge plume of smoke and everyone turning around and rushing out onto the street,” Ms Ball said. Moments later, another suicide bomber struck at the Sari Club. “I realised I was underneath a lot of debris,” Ms Ball said. “Our eardrums imploded so then it was just muffled sounds and darkness, and ringing in your ears. “The impact was so forceful.” When Ms Ball pulled herself out from under the wreckage, she saw “complete devastation”. “I just went straight into survival mode and immediately thought ‘where’s Lindy?’ “I couldn’t hear her, I couldn’t see her, she wasn’t beside me. I started digging around and that’s when the panic started to set in because I was supposed to be looking after her. “As a much older sibling, it had always been my responsibility. “I felt so guilty ... I just didn’t want to leave until I found her.” Ms Kemp had been knocked unconscious and thrown to the back of the Sari Club. “I’m unsure of how long I was unconscious for,” she said. “I came to in the middle of the street. I was lined up ... with bodies on either side of me. “I stood up, I didn’t know what was going on. I couldn’t hear properly.” A Balinese woman tried to help, bringing Ms Kemp to her home where she went to the bathroom and poured water over her face, not realising until it touched her arms and back that she was burnt. She tried to get into the nearest medical centre but it was overwhelmed with victims, and wound up at Prima Medika Hospital in the heart of Denpasar, north of Kuta. Scared, panicked and confused about what had happened, all she could think about was her sister. “I was sick to my stomach not knowing if she was alive or otherwise,” Ms Kemp said. Meanwhile, Ms Ball was still at the scene of the horrific attacks, helping a woman carry a man who had lost a leg at the knee, but people around her saw she was running on “pure adrenaline” and told her to sit down on the kerb. “Pretty much as soon as I sat down, my dad came out of nowhere, which was the most awesome thing I could have seen at that time but also the most awful because I had to tell him that I didn’t have Lindy,” she said. “Dad just took over and that was exactly what I needed in that moment.” Ms Ball was put on a minibus to Sanglah General Hospital - just streets away Prima Medika - and her father had no idea where she was going, unable to communicate with the locals who helped her. Fortunate coincidences brought the sisters back together hours later - chance meetings at their respective hospitals with people whose friends were staying at the same hotel as the family and passed on their whereabouts. Ms Ball described it as “divine intervention”, the memory bringing back intense emotion. Their father went through hell in the meantime, wrongly told a Tracey vaguely matching her description had died. “He had to go through bodies, he had to go through makeshift morgues,” she said. “And when dad came in, the relief when he said ‘I’ve found Lindy and she’s OK’. It was the best thing.” The sisters’ tearful reunion was from their hospital beds. “They wheeled me straight over and we just hugged and cried for the longest time. All I remember is constantly saying ‘sorry’,” Ms Ball said. Back in Australia, they were made to keep their distance in hospital due to infection risks with their severe burns. Both agreed the skin graft sites were more painful and having the dressings changed was sheer agony. Looking back, Ms Kemp said she believed at the time that she was strong but was actually “a lot more damaged than what I thought I was”. Ms Ball said she learnt to accept her scars fairly quickly - a year or two at least - but otherwise, returning to a relative “normal” took longer. “You learn from trauma such as the bombings that you have to appreciate everything that comes your way.” Ms Kemp is equally pragmatic. “Life goes on. You’ve got to pick yourself up and get on with it.”