Petals and tears for a son lost to terror

By PATRICK GOWER

Judy Wellington sprinkled frangipani beside the bomb crater.

The beige flowers were her son Jamie's favourite. He was standing right where she sprinkled them when the car bomb exploded outside the Sari Club, and he instantly became one of the 180 victims of the Bali terrorist attack.

Slipping through the cordons behind a party of Indonesian ministers a week afterwards, Mrs Wellington became one of only a few family members to get up to the front door of the club.

"I stood there. I was able to say what I had to. I was able to stand there entirely alone right by where he died."

She had walked a kilometre along the street, past the burned-out remains of cars parked outside the bar, one of them the taxi Jamie had climbed out of with his Jakarta-based rugby team-mates just before the second explosion.

Five of them were killed. They had been there just seconds, not even long enough to get a beer, barely inside the door.

She could see how Jamie might have just had time to turn and look at the nearby Paddys Bar when the first bomb blew.

How the force of the second bomb had thrown the car's motor onto the roof of another building.

She was able to see the force of the explosion first hand; see why her son is still officially missing, presumed dead.

"There is nothing. We might never get any remains of Jamie," she told the Weekend Herald on her return this week.

"I was initially hoping to get something, but now I think it is for the best that we won't."

It will perhaps take DNA to identify any remains; they have supplied authorities with some locks of his dark brown hair after being unable to find dental records because the 31-year-old had never had a cavity in his life.

But the family know Jamie is dead. Private ceremonies will be held for him in New Zealand and Jakarta, where he had been living for the last seven years and which is home still to his American wife and two young daughters.

It was Sunday afternoon two weeks ago when the phone rang, and Mrs Wellington, a teacher and painter, was working in the garden of her Whangamata home.

She had heard of the bombing that morning, but did not know Jamie had gone to Bali to play in a 10-a-side rugby tournament.

"It was very direct - they told me that Jamie was definitely in the Sari Bar when the bomb went off. I just sat there numb for five hours. By 8pm, I thought: 'I must go'."

She flew to Jakarta the next day and was met by Jamie's widow, Lissie. It was a week earlier than she intended, having already booked a trip there to see the couple and look after grandchildren Sophie, 2 1/2, and 10-month-old Annabelle.

Then last weekend, Mrs Wellington went to Bali on her own to say goodbye to her son, to reconstruct his movements.

"It was a family need. I felt very strongly that I was there representing all our family and friends."

She will be the only one to go to the site while the destruction is still raw. The family do not want either of Jamie's two brothers, 32-year-old Keri and 17-year-old Ben, to visit while it is not safe.

Father Rob, who also teaches at an international school in Hong Kong, will represent the family at the Jakarta memorial service.

So Mrs Wellington sprinkled a flower for those not there. She laid down a bunch of orchids. And she spoke to her son.

She had not envisaged what the bomb-site would look like and she further steeled herself against it during the half-hour visit. "I had managed to close off the tears except when I was putting the flowers down and giving my own farewell."

In Bali, Mrs Wellington also met the father of one of those with Jamie in the first of the taxis ferrying the International Sports Club of Indonesia's two teams to the bar.

They had both made the semifinals - the next day they were to play each other.

Jamie had kept up his rugby despite the hot climate, hard grounds and a lack of good competition.

He also coached the junior rugby team at Jakarta International School, where he taught maths and physical education.

While there, Mrs Wellington read a file of letters from his players: "He was their friend. He never shouted at them, he taught them everything they knew about rugby. He was their hero."

Just as Jamie would have been honoured by the minute's silence before NPC games, his mother is honoured by the reputation he had forged as a New Zealander abroad.

Tributes from those who knew him in Jakarta left her "in both the deepest despair and bursting with pride".

Jamie was charismatic. The Wellington family say they have received emails with messages of grief from people who had met him only once. He was also photogenic, and they have a CD with images of him that they are yet to look through.

After growing up in Te Aroha and Murupara, the Wellington family moved to Rarotonga, where Jamie's love of the frangipani began as a 10-year-old, sewing them into leis. His secondary schooling was at Auckland's Murray's Bay Intermediate and Rangitoto College.

He gained a BSc in maths and chemistry at Massey before leaving for his OE.

It was on a stopoff in Bali that the Sari Club first became central to his life: He bumped into a group of people at the Sari who persuaded him to go to Jakarta, which he would never leave. Lissie and the two girls will stay there, her teaching job at the same school providing her with the wage and support she needs to raise two preschoolers.

Judy Wellington says she remains in an emotional haze, confused, but not yet angry about the loss of her son two weeks on from the sunny Whangamata day when international terror reached New Zealand and hit her family.

"There I was praying for some rain when our whole world was turned upside down. And it will never be the same again."

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* Bali Bombing Hotline: 0800 432 111

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