Full-moon ceremony marks one year since Bali bombing

By JAN McGIRK

KUTA BEACH, Bali - Last night a full moon shone on Bali and streaked the sea with silver.

Normally, young travellers from around the world would be gathered on these beaches for a rave, fuelled by ecstasy tablets or magic mushrooms, to dance the night away.

But this weekend marks the first anniversary since a suicide bomber and massive carbomb ripped through Paddy's Bar and the Sari Club on Kuta Beach.

Out of respect for the 202 people who were killed on October 12 last year, the scene is sombre. Government travel warnings are posted, and security guards search at hotel entrances, wary that extremists might target the island paradise again.

T-shirts hawked at "Ground Zero" catch the defiant mood of western visitors who flout the official warnings: "Osama Don't Surf" reads the most popular one.

Balinese grandmothers and toddlers wear them in solidarity with the visitors in dreadlocks and temporary tattoos.

Kay Marks, a housewife from Melbourne, surveys the low wall where posies and tributes are posted up. A bottle of local Bintang beer is open beneath one surfer's battered photo.

"We have been coming to Kuta for ten years, but went to America last year. All the rest of our gang of married ladies came out to celebrate Sue's 40th birthday. They all died; we read about it in the paper," she said.

"But this hasn't just affected us and our loved ones. The tourists are frightened to come back. We realise that if we stay away, the Balinese people will starve. We will come back every year to help them rebuild. We love this place. But now we jump at a car backfiring. We feel it must be safe, that it won't happen again in the same place."

More tourists, sunburned and stunned, file past a grand new altar, with the names of the bomb victims chiselled into granite, erected opposite the empty lot where the Sari Club discotheque once stood. Some hold candles or orchids.

Among those killed in the worst terror attack since the 2001 strikes on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon were 88 Australians, 38 Indonesians, 26 Britons and three New Zealanders.

Asana Viebeke, organiser of a local merchants carnival, requested that priests bless the monument on the night of the full moon even though it is not yet complete.

"It is very emotional. Some people read the names and burst into tears. But in our culture, we do not understand this need for memorial. We have a different calendar, and we prefer to ease the passage of the spirit for reincarnation. It is done. But we will pray together."

Hindus in Bali light joss sticks and place them on offerings of fruit and flowers to spin in the waves on full moon nights

Black and white chequered cloth, which traditionally symbolises the balance of good and evil, wraps the pedestals of two deities that were left undamaged by the blast at Paddy's Bar. A backpack rigged with explosives went off there and sent customers scurrying out to the street to face a subsequent fireball. But the stone gods remained in place, barely blackened.

Some visitors stand out in Kuta with their visible scars-- raw welts where burns have not quite healed, or a hook instead of a hand.

At Sanglah Hospital, where the corridors were lined with burned bodies last year and where the Australian Prime Minister John Howard will open a new burn unit funded by his govenment, Dr Wayan Sutarga greets former patients who turn up unannounced.

"They are on a sentimental journey," he says.

"They hunt for nurses or doctors who helped them that night. Many seem to be trying to piece together their lives since the blasts."

- INDEPENDENT

Herald Feature: Bali bomb blast