Tears and hugs greet Bali survivors in Australian cities

Tears and hugs greet Bali survivors in Australian cities

Michael Christie, Reuters, Sydney, Australia

Bedraggled and tearful Australian survivors of a bomb attack in
an Indonesia resort flew home on Monday to anxious relatives
while the more seriously wounded were evacuated to hospitals
across Australia on special flights.

From the crack of dawn, relatives and friends packed airport
arrival halls to greet holidaymakers caught up in the car bomb
explosion on the holiday island of Bali in which more than 180
people were killed and more tan 300 wounded.

"It was like a war broke out. It was just fear," Leigh
McGrath, 22, told reporters at Sydney airport as up to 1,300
people were due to arrive in Australia's main city.

"I don't think there will be many people going back to Bali."

Fringed with idyllic beaches and catering to all types with
luxury resorts for big spenders and dirt-cheap hostels for young
backpackers and surfers, Bali is a favorite holiday destination
for hundreds of thousands of Australians every year.

While the government said there was no evidence the late
Saturday bomb attack on a packed strip of bars at Kuta Beach was
aimed at Australians, the suspected religious militant attackers
must have known that most of the revelers would have been
Australian.

"I really believe whoever did this made a concerted effort to
hit at the heart of Australia because that's where our kids
play," Robyn Thompsett told the Australian Associated Press news
agency as she arrived in the Western Australian city of Perth.

In Sydney, weeping friends and relatives comforted each other
while they waited nervously for the first plane load of evacuees.

Many returning vacationers, clutching children, surfboards or
souvenirs, appeared shocked and burst into tears as they threw
themselves into waiting arms.

A few, their legs slashed by glass or shrapnel, or with broken
bones or burns, were rolled out on wheelchairs while the
seriously injured were carried into ambulances on the tarmac and
whisked off to hospitals.

One Australian died during a three-hour flight to Darwin in a
Royal Australian Air Force transport plane.

Australian Federal Police issued questionnaires to all
arriving passengers and interviewed any who had witnessed the
bombing, which tore through the popular Sari Club nightspot in
Kuta.

"Kaboom and there were arms and legs everywhere," said
survivor Glen Dubois, a thick bandage covering a damaged eye.

"I blacked out. When I came to, I said to myself 'jump up,
jump up' and I managed to throw around five or six bodies off me.
Everyone around me was dead."

Many of the Australians drinking and dancing in the Sari were
Australian football players.

Around the country, clubs mourned and waited for news.

Stephanie Page, girlfriend of Geelong football club player
Paul Chapman, told reporters at Melbourne airport that he and his
teammates had been thinking about going to the Sari.

"Then they felt the ground shake, and could smell the smoke
and burned flesh," Page said, waiting for Chapman to return. "He
said he was scared and distressed. He said it was a mini-Sept.
11."

Shell-shocked Australia declared on Monday Oct. 20 a national
day of mourning, as it began counting its dead from bomb blasts
in Indonesia that brought the "war on terrorism" into its own
backyard.

Embarking on a review of security across the nation, Prime
Minister John Howard said there was little doubt that terrorists
were behind the Bali bombing that killed at least 183 people.