BALI SURVIVOR, 15 YEARS ON
IF THERESE Fox had not been the mother of two young children when a terrorist detonated a suicide bomb in a Bali nightclub, she doesn’t believe she would have survived.
Fifteen years on from the lifealtering Kuta attacks that killed 202 people and injured a further 209, Ms Fox says she has refused to let terrorists steal anything more from her.
“Today is not about me — it’s about the people that didn’t come home and their families,” Ms Fox said. “They’re the people I think of.”
The Grovedale woman was one of hundreds of Australians enjoying a night out on October 12, 2002 when a terrorist detonated a bomb that tore through Bali’s nightclub strip.
Her friend Bronwyn Cartwright and fellow Geelong residents Aaron and Justin Lee and Justin’s wife Stacey, nee Thornburgh, were among the 88 Australians who died in the attacks.
Ms Fox says it was the desire to care for her young children that helped her survive excruciating burns sustained to 85 per cent of her body.
“Obviously the burns impacted me — they restricted my life for a long time,” Ms Fox said.
She was one of the last Australian survivors released from hospital and spent a year receiving intense treatment. While in hospital Ms Fox was desperate to return home.
“If I hadn’t had my kids I would be dead. They were very much the driving force behind my survival,” Ms Fox said.
The road to recovery has been long and challenging — but it has been richly rewarding. Ms Fox, who still lives in Geelong, works, hangs out with her kids and looks after her grandson.
“Bali has made me a better person, it’s made me understand that life can be really short,” Ms Fox said.
“You need to enjoy what you can, when you can.
“You need to tell people that you love them and you need to let go of some things.”
The deadly attacks occurred just 13 months after the 9/11 attacks in the US took the horrors of terrorism to a global television audience.
“When I watched September 11 on television it never entered my radar that months later something similar would happen to me,” Ms Fox said.
“Now, terrorism happens so often. It’s horrifying.”
Ms Fox said she did not want people to focus on her story on the 15th anniversary of the Bali bombings, but instead wants others to remember the innocent lives lost and families that changed for ever. She hopes her story can give hope to survivors of other terrorist attacks — hope that they too can recover.
“We got caught up in a war, so to speak, that had nothing to do with us,” Ms Fox said.
“These were young people enjoying themselves and some fanatic took their lives.
“We were all innocent.”