9/11 (01):
10/12 (02):

Bali Special with Robert Wolfgramm

They look like numbers in an IQ test, and if this were one, you would be asked to provide the next sequence in the series. We don’t know yet if 11/13 (03) is the right answer. What these numbers represent is a serial dumbness called terrorism. New York first, now Bali. First, the defining moment of the 21st century, and then another of its consequences. First a strike at the heart of American capitalism, now a blow to a far, South-East Asian island redesigned for Australian partying.

A mythical island in Rodger and Hammerstein’s 1958 musical South Pacific was really an end-of-season footy player’s idea of paradise: cheap fares, cheap digs, cheap beer and cheap food. When the 1970s protest pop group Redgum sang “life is tragic hanging out in Kuta” in “I’ve Been to Bali Too,” they were sending up that island’s trendiness and popularity on the Ocker-hippie trail.

Bali will now be remembered for a murderous bomb explosion on the night of October 12, 2002, when young Australians mixed with a local and international cast of party-goers at the Sari Nightclub. Just as the words Twin Towers need no further qualification, so the word Bali will be forever corrupted by what evil men have done out of contempt for others not joined to their cause.

Such inexcusable evil, having been executed on others, awaits judgment—that much is certain. But pause to consider what chain of events gave rise to this species of wickedness.

A creeping fear is affecting us all. Time magazine recently featured covers and stories on post-9/11 trauma, anxieties and phobias; Muslims burn Christian worshippers in Indonesian churches; a boat-bomb hits a French oil tanker; hate-crime rises in Western countries. And how will we cope with a summer of bushfire terrorism?

Since 9/11, I’ve flown five times. Each time, sitting in my seat, I look into the faces of my fellow travellers searching for a sign of malicious intent, smiling all the time hoping to reassure them that I can be trusted. Will this plane make it to our destination or will some nutter hooked on the constant drip of resentment take us down a hellish plughole with him?

Imagine the carefree moments in the Sari club. A beer, a cigarette, a look, a kiss, a floor of young Australians being plied with drinks, and being fed by poor Balinese. Imagine the revelry, the toasting and boasting. The bodies crammed up against each other so thick they spill into the sticky street. Then imagine waking from a nightmare burning, aching and gasping for air on a wreckage-strewn, body-bleeding footpath. Then waking again in a Darwin hospital to the news that you’re the only survivor from among your group of friends.

You’d lived that night as though there were no tomorrow—and there wasn’t. Not for your companions.
After 9/11, Prime Minister Howard gave Australian support for America’s position in regard to the Middle East and its Islamic malcontents. We may have applauded, but we ought to have shuddered too. Just to our north-west lies the Indonesian archipelago. Out of the shadows of this 200-million-strong juggernaut has come a wake-up call to Australian complacency, an alarm bell for a nation still holidaying in this corner of the planet. And the call is this: if you want to tempt fate, prepare for the worst.

In any tourist setting, the baggage handler just wants to handle luggage, the taxidriver just wants his fare and the holiday-maker just wants to kick back. But none of us can relax now. We will always be on the alert wondering if our next blink will be a sequel to 9/11 (01): 10/12 (02).

There is no more innocence, no neutral corner. The holiday is over and our faith in each other, in multiculturalism, is being corroded daily. Can we recover it? Will peace and security return to our minds and our nations?

I know of only one solution: the way of love made possible by receiving the Holy Spirit. That is what the Prince of Peace meant when He said, ‘He who is not with me is against me.” It’s His way, or no way. It’s love, or nothing.

Living Amid the Headlines

Extract from Signs of the Times, December 2002.

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