Bali 20 Years On

Liz MacLeod: Good morning, everybody. I'm Liz MacLeod and I'm the Chief Executive of the East Metropolitan Health Service, which, as the name imaginatively implies, is the health service in the eastern corridor of the metropolitan area of Perth, and we provide health care for more than 700,000 people. 

Our hospitals include Royal Perth Hospital—where many of the injured patients from the Bali bombings twenty years ago were cared for—in addition to Bentley, Armadale, and Kalamunda hospitals, and also St John of God Midland Public Hospital, which is operated under a public-private partnership. 

And thank you very much for joining us here today. It's an absolute pleasure to be here to lead this panel discussion, ‘Bali twenty years on.’ My team and myself were very proud to be able to work with the WA Museum to stage the corresponding exhibition in the Old Gaol to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Bali bombings last month. 

And it really is a tremendous exhibition, and hopefully you'll find time to visit, which pays tribute to the health care workers and the patients. So, if you haven't been, there’ll be— Hopefully you’ll have time afterwards to pop on down. 

But firstly, I'd like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which we're meeting today, the Whadjuk people of the Nyoongar nation, and on this absolutely glorious day in kambarang season it is a privilege to be on Nyoongar Country. 

In many ways it’s hard to believe that it’s twenty years ago that we were rocked by this tragic event in Bali. As you may recall, at 11 pm on the 12th of October 2002, Bali was shattered by three bombs being detonated: one outside the American consulate in Bali; one by a suicide bomber inside Paddy’s Bar; and one in a van outside the Sari Club.  

Paddy’s and the Sari Club were two of Kuta beach’s busiest nightclubs. 202 people were killed in total. 88 were Australians, with 16 from Western Australia. However, out of this tragedy emerged an enormous amount of kindness, cooperation, collaboration, and innovation, as well as an outpouring of love, care, and humanity for those killed or injured and those tasked with caring for the injured. 

So, just to give you some background about the panel I have with us today, we had Bali bombing survivor Antony Svilicich, Dr. Vijith Vijayasekaran, known as Vij. <laughs> Did I do okay?  

Vijith Vijayasekaran: Yeah. 

Liz MacLeod: <laughs> And Professor Fiona Wood. I'm delighted to have you all here today with me to share some of your experiences of the event and then to reflect on any of the positives that may have resulted from the tragedy, both personally and professionally. 

So, just some background about the panel members.  

Antony really is the miracle patient. He was the last patient to leave Royal Perth Hospital, having spent months in hospital, including the intensive care unit and in a coma for weeks on end. 

Vij, a plastic surgeon, and his lovely wife, Priya, also a doctor, happened to be in Bali on holiday when the bombs were detonated, and played a key role on the ground in assisting those injured and relaying back to Royal Perth Hospital, where they had just been training, the current status and the need to get the patients to them pretty quickly. 

And Fiona Wood, a world-renowned burn specialist who was working at Royal Perth Hospital at the time of the Bali bombings. 

So, Antony. Can you tell us how it was that it happened, how you happened to be in Bali on the night? And when was the first inkling that you had that something was not quite right when you were at the Sari Club? 

Antony Svilicich: Um, yeah. So, we were meant to go in April of that year. It was sort of meant to be, I guess, a boy’s weekend away. There was five of us meant to go and we, ah— It sort of coincided with school holidays. And this sort of friend rang me up and said, “Oh, look, school holidays, it's going to be pretty busy over there and that. I think we should change the date.” Yeah, good idea. <laughs> Not so much now, but... <laughs> 

So, we went in October instead and we got there the night before, on the 11th of October. And look, everything seemed fine the night before. And the next day we sort of spent at the hotel pool, sort of lazing about and just relaxing and drinking and eating, and what you do when you’re sort of on holidays. And sort of the afternoon turned into night and we ended up in the Sari Club so, yeah. 

Look, it was just a normal sort of Saturday night out in Bali. Lots of people around having fun. And you know, that sort of thing. And really there was nothing, no inkling that something was going to go wrong or anything like that. It wasn't until just after 11 o'clock there was a huge sort of bang down the road at Paddy’s Bar and that was the first sort of, the first bomb that went off, at Paddy’s. 

And that was sort of the first indication that something wasn’t right, sort of thing, and at that stage we didn't really know what it was. Someone shouted out, perhaps “gas explosion” or “plane crash” or something like that, but no one really knew. 

And then I think it was about twenty seconds later, the Sari Club bomb went off and all hell broke loose. So, yeah. 

Liz MacLeod: So, could you just talk us through the next couple of hours and what happened, and how did you get out of there? 

Antony Svilicich: Well, ah, jeez, I... I think it was a bit of luck. A bit of, sort of, ah, a bit of a miracle, I guess you could say. I mean, the bomb, as you’ve probably seen on the news and that, it completely sort of demolished the club and the surrounding area and I— The bomb knocked me out. 

So, when I woke up I was sort of lying on my back, buried under the rubble of the nightclub. You know, the bar and all the rest of it. And I sort of managed to get up on my feet and I looked around and everything had just disappeared.  

I mean, the bar had been packed full of people, like, a minute earlier, with dance floor and people dancing and bars and all that. And next minute, it was just nothing, just complete devastation and fire. You know, everywhere you looked, there was fire. 

It was almost like hell had descended on Bali, you know? I just couldn't believe my eyes, as to what I was seeing. And so, I guess my instincts just took over and I had to sort of try and get out of there, you know? And I'm looking around thinking, where do you go? You know, there’s fire everywhere. What do you do? 

It was just— I looked over, saw on about a forty-five degree angle twenty metres away, and I could see this hole in the wall. You know, it’s quite large. It had jagged edges. Looked as though it had been blown out. And I looked over and I could see this sort of bright light, you know, really, really bright light about— It must have been at least two metres in diameter. You know, it was just glowing, you know, really— And it was just hovering over this wall. 

And I thought, well, this must be the way out. So, you know, I started walking towards the hole in the wall, and I’m walking, walking, and there's just— The floor of the Sari was covered in debris. You know, bricks and glass and timber and that, and quite deep, so as I'm walking my sort of legs are sort of sinking into the Sari, you know. And it was quite deep at times, up to my knee, and I just sort of dragged my leg out. 

But guided by this light, I sort of made my way out, you know, and just kept walking and walking as far as I could, away from the fire, away from the danger. And yeah, ended up sort of, you know, away from the fire, slumped up against a wall about forty or fifty metres away, roughly. 

And yeah, I just sort of sat there for a while trying to get my breath back and trying to just take stock. You know, try and make sense of what had occurred. Because at that stage we didn't know, sort of thing. And there were a few other sort of survivors there and that, and yeah. So, for the next sort of ten or fifteen minutes, I was just there sort of trying to get me breath back. And then eventually some first responders sort of came along and carried me out of the area there and ended up taking me to an area just in front of the Bali cottages where some Australian doctors had set up a bit of a triage area there. 

And I distinctly recall a doctor coming up and checking my sort of vitals and that, and he said to me, you know, “You'll be okay, just hang in there.” 

That was reassuring because I certainly didn't feel okay at the time. I was quite badly injured. And so, I'm not sure how long I lay there for. I was sort of slipping in and out of consciousness. But eventually they took me away on the back of a Ute and took me up to Jimbaran bay, a little medical clinic there. I think it's called the Kasih Ibu Hospital or something like that. And that's when I sort of got treated initially for my injuries. Yeah. 

Liz MacLeod: And what about your family at home? Do you think at that point they— They obviously would have heard about the bombings, do you think? And how did that all play out?  

Antony Svilicich: It was my sister-in-law, actually. She heard about it on the news, the bombing in Bali and, of course, they knew I was there. So, immediately they think, oh, hang on a minute, maybe, you know, let's just try and find out if he's all right. 

And my brother was out fishing at the time on my boat, and she rang him up and said, “There's been a bombing in Bali. Come home quickly.” So, he hurried home, yeah, so hurriedly that he ended up slamming the boat in the pier on the way back in. He was just in a panic, you know, trying to get back. 

And I think for the next sort of twelve hours they were making phone calls, trying to find out what’s going on. They couldn't get through and it was quite frustrating for them, trying to get information, you know. And then eventually they found out that I had been injured and that I was in one of the hospitals there. 

So, then they were sort of trying to make plans to sort of get over there and that. So— But it was very, very sudden, you know, and very— I guess they were probably in shock at the time, like everyone else was. Yeah. 

Liz MacLeod: Yeah. And were they able then to get over there? And how did you stay in contact with them during that period of time? 

Antony Svilicich: Well, apparently I made a phone call home, but I don't recall. I don't remember making the call home at all. And I spoke to one of them, but I don't recall. But they were going to fly up to Darwin to see me but then— Because I got airlifted out to Darwin. But then they found that I was going to be transferred to Perth so they didn’t end up going to Darwin. So, yeah.  

Liz MacLeod: And what— If you had to, like— What’s your summary of the memory of the night? 

Antony Svilicich: <sigh> Just the— I guess the— Just the sudden change in the environment. You know, one minute it’s a fully functioning pub, nightclub with, you know— Everyone’s there having a great time and that, and then the next minute, just devastation. You know, just complete and utter devastation. That's such a sudden change in the environment, you know. I've never seen anything like it and I hope I never see anything like that again in my life. It was just so— It’s so sudden and unexpected. 

Liz MacLeod: Yeah. So, thank you very much for sharing that. That is obviously, ah, tough memories there, and really appreciate you sharing them with all of us. 

So, Vij, we’ll just move now to yourself. And you were in Bali at the time. Probably fortunate for a lot of other people that you were there. So, when did you first know that the peace that we all associate with Bali had been disturbed? And how did you and Priya end up at the local hospital helping? 

Vijith Vijayasekaran: So, we arrived in Bali on the Saturday morning at about 2 am, so that was— The bomb was Saturday night. So, we were on a week’s break. Priya is, was an anaesthetic trainee. She was coming up to her final exam, so it was our last break before she really got into her study. I was at— So, she was at [Princess Margaret Hospital]. I was at Royal Perth [Hospital]. 

So, that night, Saturday evening, we went to have dinner with friends who had come from Melbourne. They happened to be staying in ... On our way back home, we were in the taxi and we saw the explosion. <clears throat> And it was truly— It was like a lightning strike. The whole sky lit up. Like, you could just see the sky suddenly light up and then all you could see was, like, a mushroom cloud. Like, you know, like, almost like you would see in the movies. This big mushroom cloud. <clears throat> 

The taxi driver couldn't really tell us. He said there was an, um, explosion in the Matahari shopping centre. So, we got back to our hotel at about 11 o’clock and we asked ... the front desk, you know, what's happened? And no one knew because it was that typical, you know, early stages of any of those events. No one really knew. And so— But we knew something had happened, but we didn't exactly know what it was. 

And then the next morning at about 7 am, Mum and Dad rang us up from Perth. And we were, you know, we didn't have kids then and we were used to those 7 o’clock phone calls from your parents just to check in how you’re going, where are you... “We’re on holiday...” <Liz laughs> And they had sort of had heard the news and said there’d been a bomb. 

And I guess their first words to us were, “Do not help. Do not leave the hotel.” And I guess— I grew up in Sri Lanka. I came here when I was eleven. And they’d experienced, you know, we’d experienced bombs, etcetera, and they knew that it was just chaos after that usually, so they didn't want us to go. But we, soon as we hung up from them, I rang the hospital, Sanglah Hospital and told them that, you know, I’m a plastics trainee, Priya’s an anaesthetics trainee, and that we could be of some help. 

But I guess what— The good thing that we did, and they said, “Please come down,” and straight after that— Because we weren’t going to tell Mum and Dad where we were going, we rang the Australian Consulate to let them know that, just in case there was another bomb at the hospital, someone would know where we were. And I guess that was a fortunate thing that we did because we met— The Australian Consulate General was the deputy there when we arrived. 

So, that's how we found out. From Mum and Dad.  

Liz MacLeod: So, then when you arrived at the hospital, what were the scenes that confronted you, and how did you deal with what you were seeing? 

Vijith Vijayasekaran: So, when we— You know, it was that typical sort of ‘third world’ sort of hospital with the gated fronts. The gates were closed and we got in through a pedestrian access. But there were like, you know, lots of people, you know, peering over the walls. Lots of media mingling around. 

But when we got in, because we had a name, a contact of someone, we went to the emergency department and we were met by David Chapman, who was the Deputy Australian Consulate General in Bali. And they took us up to the first ward, which was sort of upstairs, above the emergency department. And, you know, there were lots— There were lots of rooms, lots of patients. 

But the first patient that unfortunately we came across, or one of the first patients we came across, was an English tourist who had a shrapnel wound to his arm and had ... arm. So, he didn't have any blood flowing to the arm. <clears throat> And so I said— The first thing I said was, “Can we get an opening theatre? You know, we can fix him.” 

And then they were like, “Hang on a second. You can't operate on anyone because, you know, [you’re] not a local doctor.” And that was in some ways fortunate for us because David was with us, and David then, could then start making the calls to get permission for us to start treating the injured. And so, when we arrived, there were also lots of ex-pats who had— You know, local ex-pats who were running businesses, etcetera. So, they were with us as well. 

So, we had a couple of ex-pats with us. David went off to sort out permission. We didn’t operate on that patient because we couldn't at that time. But then, we were taken to <clears throat> the number of other wards and patients. It was that typical ‘third world’ single level hospital with, you know, sprawling wards and lots of corridors, etcetera. 

So, we were then taken to one of the main wards, which is the Malati Ward, which is where we ended up moving at the end of the day, trying to consolidate Australian patients— The injured, I should say. Not just Australian patients. Yeah, so, that's sort of what we were confronted with. 

Liz MacLeod: Gosh. So, you've done years of training then, as, both training to be a doctor and then obviously years working as a doctor. What parts of that training and your work as, training to be a plastic surgeon, actually really helped you in that time? 

Vijith Vijayasekaran: So, I guess from our point of view, our skill set was exactly what was needed there. Our training— Most people think plastic surgeons just do cosmetic surgery which is unfortunate for our specialty. It's probably a small part of what we do. And a lot of what we do is, you know, when we’re training is trauma, burns, you know, multi trauma, hand trauma, etcetera. It probably is one of the busiest specialties. 

And Royal Perth is, certainly was at that stage the busiest hospital to work at and I did— Both Priya and I did a lot a lot of our training there. And when you're a trainee at Royal Perth you’re used to juggling, you know, multiple patients coming through the emergency department, some needing operations, and just coordinating lots of patients who’ll need treatment relatively quickly. 

So, that part of our training really did help us deal with obviously a mass casualty situation. A much scaled up version of that. But it definitely prepared us well to deal with that situation.  

And anaesthetics is the same. You know, they’re used to— When you train as an anaesthetist at Royal Perth you’re the registrar on call. You’re dealing with lots of surgeons saying, “I need to take this patient to theatre,” and patients being, you know, called from the ward, etcetera. So that real ... training at Royal Perth is probably what helped us both in that situation. 

Liz MacLeod: And you’d obviously been— Had you just been working at Royal Perth, just before you went up to Bali? 

Vijith Vijayasekaran: Yes. And at that stage Royal Perth was one of the three training hospitals for plastic surgery, and so I spent a lot of my training at Royal Perth. I trained there as an intern. So did Priya. So, I was actually working with Fiona at that stage, in the burns unit. We’d just come off a really busy week, two days before. Putting five fingerson, being up all night, rolling into another day. And then I was the lucky one who got to have a holiday, unlike my colleagues who got to stay back, and the other registrars who had to deal with the week. Yeah, so I'd been working at Royal Perth. 

Liz MacLeod: But it must have been useful to have at least nine people back at Royal Perth and that you were then transferring and facilitating the transfer back from Bali to Royal Perth. So, was that a helpful thing to actually have just come from Royal Perth?  

Vijith Vijayasekaran: Yeah. Look, it was, it was clear from the moment we got there that there was— The only chance of survival for these patients was to get them out. There was, you know, the system was overwhelmed. They didn't have the expertise, the resources. And yeah, being in Royal Perth, actually the first person I called was Dr. Anthony Williams, who is a very close colleague of mine, who was the other trainee. And I said, rang him and said, “You know that bad week we had? It’s just about to get a lot worse for you.” 

And then I spoke to Bill Beresford and Mark ... Smith and Fiona, just to let them know. That communication really did help because I probably spoke to Bill Beresford probably at about 9 o’clock in the morning. So, we got there at about 8 [o’clock.] So, very early on, Royal Perth knew the situation of what was happening on the ground over there and they knew, sort of, numbers and what was required. 

But, you could imagine, we were completely, as a country, as a nation, completely caught off guard. You know, no one was expecting a terrorist attack in Australia and no one was expecting, obviously, a terrorist attack on Australians on foreign soil. And so, it was— I guess no one knew, really, what to do from a national, and from, I guess, from the point of view of Australia, and how to deal with this stuff. 

It had done some stuff before but it was very recent and— Yeah, so, that communication was really important and I think that made a big difference.  

Liz MacLeod: Absolutely. So, now maybe, if we move to Fiona. You were back in Perth. And when were you first aware of what had happened in Bali, and so— And then also I suppose the enormity of that? 

Fiona Wood: I guess, as Vij says, we— Anthony was the one who called me, I think, first, and certainly by really very early that morning, it was really clear that we had— The information that Vij was feeding us. This was significant. Significant numbers of patients and there was a need to action our disaster plan. And so that was probably, easily by 10 o’clock, we really had that clarity that we had to get on and action the disaster plan. 

And that, as Vij says, was like— Really, well, we’d— The disaster—if I take a step sideways a little bit—the disaster plan had come about because Woodside Petroleum had contacted us in the late, in the 1990s because one of the oil rigs was the same configuration as Piper Alpha and it was just coming online: North Rankin A.  

And Piper Alpha was a rig that exploded off the Aberdeen coast in the late 1980s with the biggest loss of life of any such event. And so they had adjusted and made changes to North Rankin A. Blast walls, and different ways where the accommodation of their people were, and things like that. But they wanted to do a disaster exercise so that they could see, if anything happened, how would they respond in the northwest shelf here when there was only fifteen beds at the time in Nickol Bay Hospital. 

So, we worked with them over some years, building and layering up this plan to the point when the Sydney Olympics rolled around it became apparent that nobody had thought— There’s been a lot of planning in to different contingencies, but nobody had thought what would happen if a bomb in the Olympics— Or something that required a lot of burn care. 

And so, as Australia and New Zealand Burns Association, we've got, we built on the plans we've done here, funded by Woodside and we started building the plans that would be actually how we responded across Australia, so that we have small multidisciplinary teams in each capital city. 

But how would we surge to respond to such a demand? How could we move teams? How could we move patients? And so, in those discussions, we got into, we were in contact with Emergency Management Australia and the Commonwealth Government; with the military and understanding what military capability we had; understanding what private and what other assets you could deploy with respect to medical transfer; and all this had been all put together. We were very proud of all this.  

It was called AUSBURNPLAN and we put that to the Health Minister’s advisory council in July of 2002 for their meeting in July. In August we got a response that they thought it was a good plan and that we could all work together. But that we needed to exercise the plan and make sure— Because we’d done an exercise in WA called Exercise Icarus where we be flying around the northwest and all, and flew teams up from Royal Perth to augment the teams in Nickol Bay Hospital. And from that we'd learned a lot that was part of our planning process.  

And so, we were all gearing up to look at how we could exercise the plan to see where the holes were in everything and how to get better. And that was a discussion we were just starting to have in September, but we never did that practice because we did it for real.  

And so, in part it was, it was like, whoa, this has happened offshore. Well, how are we— One of the really challenging things was, we knew the military guys, we knew the reservists, we knew the people that were going to come and retrieve, and we knew the capability of the Hercules and all these different assets, but nobody thought, well, what about the Indonesian government? And so there was a whole lot of— The discussions that— A lot of talk, like, could they come? Can they land? Can they land the planes? And how's that going to be all organised?  

And the feel of pulling out all the patients. Well, how do we organise that, too? This is just Australians? Well, no, it wasn't. There was German— We had a whole section of German boys. But also, we had Indonesian patients as well that came here looking for care.  

But that was that was a whole lot of negotiations that really started by the middle of Sunday afternoon. I was at a wedding at Fraser’s, and I remember the mobile reception was just shocking at Fraser’s. <laughs> I remember I was out wandering around, trying to get good reception, and I remember seeing Peter Hughes on the television at one point and I was saying, it looks like he's talking to you now, but he won't be talking to you for very long because he's swelling up, he’ll lose his airway. We need to really put the— This isn't a tomorrow issue. 

I remember speaking to the guys in Canberra. This is not a tomorrow issue. We need to retrieve today. “Oh, well, we—” I said, no, we need to get these discussions. We need to retrieve today. And really keen and put in that sense of urgency because some of the media in there were like, oh, look at the people that— This is happening, that people are getting a bit of treatment. It's okay.  

Well, no, it's not okay. We know. This is not okay. In burn injury, it just keeps going and getting worse and worse and worse unless you kind of get in there and sort it out. And so, it was an interesting afternoon, that Sunday afternoon. And then people had really, I think, got the, “Oh.” We had the “Aha. Yes,” by late that afternoon. 

And people set right off the— Kerry Stokes mobilised transport. There were people who weren't injured, desperate to get home. The whole place was in chaos. There were people desperate to get there to find their loved ones. The whole thing started to really— Like, the tension had built up in the pressure cooker by that Sunday afternoon. 

Yes, we know we’ve got something really serious here to deal with and we need to pull those levels of organisation in place so that we can do, we can effect the best we can for everyone. You know, for the patients, for people looking after, for the people wanting to move around.  

And so, we had by early hours of Monday morning, that Sunday night to Monday morning, those teams out at the airport triaging people coming off planes, coming off commercial planes, coming off the private retrieval planes and things like that.  

And so, Andy Robertson was out there who—You probably know who he is, though twenty years ago you didn't know who he was. But he was there with that triage team because he was instrumental in AUSBURNPLAN because he just came out of the Navy at the time and he was in that whole disaster space. 

And so, he was there with those teams. So, people with burns came to Royal Perth. Non burn injuries went to [Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital] or Fremantle [Hospital]. People were being checked out. I'm A-okay. Yeah, you could go to a GP in the morning, or whatever, you know. So, there was that service provided out at the airport and they'd set up a whole triage centre out there as well. 

Liz MacLeod: So then, for the people coming through to the Royal Perth Hospital, how many of those did you and your team see and how many did you see and just, I suppose, how did you see that— What does that compare to a normal week in terms of what you had to do, and what you and the team had to do? 

Fiona Wood: I think, as Vij said, we were coming off a busy time. And I'm smiling because there's no such thing as not a busy time at Royal Perth. <laugh> Like, Vij said, “Yeah, it was a busy week.” Well, is that any different from any other week? And so, we don't have a lot of slack in the system, it would be fair to say. Yeah. And so, the planning was really important. So, we had twenty-eight patients.  

We had a burns unit that had been built by Harold McComb in the late 1970s and it was actually, at the time, state of the art with respect to air flow, HEPA filtered environment and separate— There’s a two-bed and then it was singles, seven singles. But then there was a double door, airlock door, into a ward of four and another double door and another airlock for four patients. So, we had that built in surge capacity right from the word go.  

And so we cohorted all the patients, according to their microbiology, eventually. Like, which bugs they had, to keep them together. And so— We were full at the time. So, we had to mobilise everybody who could go home a couple of days early, who could be transferred into different places, to keep them safe as well. Because we knew, from the microbiology point of view, infection is the biggest risk we have in burns and it still remains the most significant thing. So, infection control is huge. 

And so, we basically took over to the plastic surgery ward. We expanded out to twenty-eight eventually, but we also had our unburned patients, as well. 

And then, in the intensive care, there was movement of patients out of intensive care, again, maybe a little bit early here, where we could. But ah— How many beds is in the ICU Royal Perth? It's two halves. What, about thirty?— 

Liz MacLeod: We’ve got a new one now. It’s twenty-four beds.  

Fiona Wood: Oh, it was about that— 

Liz MacLeod: It was twenty-four. It was two halves of twelve. 

Fiona Wood: Yeah. So, the twelve and twelve. Yeah. And so, moving everyone out and then into ICU at Royal—Eh, to St John of God’s, other hospitals. And we were all— So that we had, one half of the intensive care was the burn patients so that again we kept the post-operative cardiac surgical patients safe from these burn patients with different bacteria and everything. And so, I remember when that was one incident thing that we’d got all planned and we'd done.  

Somebody visited. I think it might have been— Kay Patterson was the health minister? I can't remember. And she goes, “Oooh. The other places haven’t done this.” I thought, oh, tick! We've got that one right. <laughs> Yeah. And so, we were very focused on there, on that.  

So, the twenty-eight patients coming through that had burns ranged from three people who didn't survive who, had a burn of over ninety percent, and in the seventy percent zone, the other two. And so, all the other twenty-five, of course, survived, and Antony was in the top end of survivors. 

But we see there's a range of injury. So, in the emergency department we had a range of capability with respect to the emergency physicians, the trauma surgeons, the plastic surgeons, and the nurses, so that we had a team on everybody and the team was, like, appropriate to the level of the patient.  

And Vij, as you're describing, like, juggling all the patients. So, we've got to theatre at Royal Perth, to get— I remember that over and over in my mind all the time, where everybody’s at. All these twenty-eight patients. Like, who’s the priority? Which operating theatre can they go to? Just keep reappraising it all the time.  

So, I had these twenty-eight people in my head <laughs> and so, and kind of— I was floating from one to the next. When there was a problem, I'd go and help and troubleshoot a little bit. 

And then we had to decide where they’re going. Well, if you're ventilated, you go to intensive care. If you're not ventilated, go to the burns unit. And if you're really a small burn, relatively, you could go to the four-bed area in the burns unit, not a single room. And all these things had to be decided. 

And then, on the Monday, we had a big meeting in the boardroom at Royal Perth and Carmel[?], our nurse who was in charge of theatre at the time, and everybody was in there that was on the plan. We'd planned. We knew we needed the store guys in there. We needed pathology in there. We needed blood bank. And so all the administrative assistants in Bill Beresford’s office and... Carl? Agh. Phil Montgomery was there. All the sort of administrators.  

And they called, they got the list from the AUSBURNPLAN and called everybody into the meeting, which was great because we didn’t have to do that. Yeah? And so, I went in and thought, oooh, everybody’s here. <laughs> That's really good. And then I said that if we couldn't treat everybody as if they were here as an individual patient, then we had to figure out why and fix that problem because we couldn't, as— Our plan was that we would move teams around or move patients around. But there’d been a whole lot of people going to Darwin, including Anthony. 

And then the Hercules had to go somewhere. We were closest. We got a whole lot coming direct to us. Then the Herc[sic] has to go somewhere. The Hercules came to us with eighteen people and ten others came direct. But Darwin was this triage centre that sent people to Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria. The Adelaide team went into Darwin. So, that’s because there’s no major burn capacity in Darwin, so the Adelaide team went into Darwin and then they treated some people who had to be treated immediately there. And I do believe you [Antony] were one of those as well, if I remember rightly. They then took a couple of people back to Adelaide.  

So, everybody was busy, yeah? So, we couldn't augment teams. So, that's the decision on Monday. It was like, okay, how are we going to do this? Well, we need to buddy up. We've got lots of plastic surgeons who have been through the burns training as part of their training. We have the paediatric burns surgeons. And so, overall there was nineteen surgeons of senior capacity that we rostered through. And then there was nurses. Hundreds. People were just coming back and saying, “Can I help?” So, all burns nurses— Like, that sounds rude <laughs> but you know, they were coming back out of retirement for this. 

Liz MacLeod: Former burns nurses. 

Fiona Wood: <laughs> Former burns nurses. Yeah. <Liz laughs> 

And so, we had, like, a senior burns, a senior level nurse with all the volunteers and nurses from the other wards so that, you know. It’s hands on. Sometimes the dressing takes three or four people. And so, one core person, and so on it went. Same with allied health. Same with OT, physio, and the psych was kind of trying to get into it wherever they could so that, between what was going on, to try and make sure that everything was as settled as possible.  

But there was, I guess, a lot of activity, but things like— At one point we couldn’t— We had to use different bandages because the stores were depleting. And so, people said all the bandages, six-inch crepe bandages. It sounds silly. But you take twenty if you’re bandaging a leg properly, you know. It really took, to hold the bleeding and things— And so the stuff was coming from other hospitals in Perth because everybody was having this problem across the country. 

But we got lots of equipment. Like, there’s the electric ... from the other hospitals so that we could run the four theatres that we ran from Wednesday to Sunday. We ran multiple theatres. And so, all that equipment was pulled. We have a system at Royal Perth where the central area of the operating theatre, we could have a nurse guiding all the set up. We, as in theatre, put a surgical plan on all the walls, on the whiteboard, so everybody knew what was going on in each theatre. 

And so, we were able to kind of mobilise this army, if you like, that had a capability, the appropriate capability— Normally, I would have done a major burn, for example, with Mark Duncan Smith because the two of us are senior. We’d do it together. Because we were the only two the time—now there's a few more of us—but we couldn't have the luxury of doing it together because we’ve split. 

And so, the first day we did medium-sized burns so that we could show all the new, the sort of, our expanded surgical population, if you like, what to do. And then the next day we were in the major one separately while the smaller things were being taken care of by people we’d kind of updated what we wanted to do.  

And everyone was extraordinary, I think. Everybody just put their shoulder to the wheel. And Anthony Williams is right in there as the senior trainee. Yes, you were right, [Vij]. “You thought you were going to have an easy week? No.” <laughs> 

Yeah. Running around, getting everybody organised and making sure the roster of everybody was appropriate. Because, counter to popular myth, we all did sleep. <audience laughter> So, you know, none of us— We weren’t all staying there all night, every night, by any means.  

Liz MacLeod: It was an amazing response. Huge. And a huge logistics effort, I'm sure.  

<audience applause> 

Liz MacLeod: So, Antony, back to you. And by now, you're probably heading— You’re back to Perth. So, what was your first memory of being back? And do you remember Darwin? Do you remember getting back to Perth?  

Antony Svilicich: No, not really. <laughs> So, my last memory of leaving Bali was being on the Hercules aeroplane at the start of the runway, and I distinctly recall sort of the propellers sort of starting to increase their power. It was very loud. And then the plane just took off down the runway. And that was my last memory of leaving Bali. 

And then I woke up fifty-three days later, I think, at Royal Perth Hospital in the intensive care unit. So, <laughs> but apparently I went to Darwin and was treated there and had a few issues there, and then I got transferred down to Perth by the Royal Flying Doctor Service and that, so, yeah. But, like, it was a bit of a blur for me, I guess. Yeah.  

Liz MacLeod: So, you spent a lot of time in hospital. Can you run us through, like, how long it was, and I mean, hospital’s different, isn't it? We've just heard there’s different parts to the hospitals. So maybe just describe the different parts of the hospital that you spent some time in. 

Antony Svilicich: Yeah, so I think I was taken— Soon as I arrived in Perth on October 15, I think, in the morning, admitted to intensive care unit. So, I spent fifty-three days in intensive care. Forty-four days in an induced coma. During that time, I had three operations, mostly involving skin grafts just to repair the damage caused by the— So, I suffered burns to sixty percent of my body. So, mostly skin grafts to repair the damage and that, and replace the burnt skin. So, I had some major battles of infection as well. I think it was about eight or nine different types of infection in my body. At one stage there they used every antibiotic they had in the hospital to try and kill off the infection and none of it worked, so... <laughs> 

In the end it was up to Professor Wood and her team who did some amazing surgery, which essentially saved my life. So, that was obviously good for me. And then, yeah, so, after that, I think it was December 6, I think it was, that I left the ICU and then went up to the burns unit and started my rehab up there with Dr. Dale Edgar, who was the senior physio on the ward and his team. 

And that was, ah, that was interesting because, ah... <Liz laughs> because when I woke up, I couldn't move anything, you know. I was very weak. All my joints were all stiff. Very, very tight. Couldn't bend anything. Ah, I’d lost about twenty kilos, so my weight was down to fifty-eight kilos. Um, I didn't even have enough strength in my fingers, believe it or not, to change channels on the remote control for the TV. You know, that's how weak I was.  

So, completely reliant on other people for everything. You know, washing, showering, brushing your teeth, eating. Couldn't walk, couldn't do any of that, which was a bit of a shock, because prior to that I was quite a sort of fit person. I was playing sport four times a week, in fact. So, you know, so all of a sudden the not being able to move anything, it was quite a bit of a, ah, a bit of a shock, I guess you could say. Yeah.  

So, but, you know, little bit by little bit we started moving and it took— Jeez, must have been a good four weeks of twice daily physio to, ah, to just sort of touch my nose with my thumb. You know, it was quite intense there for a long time, but yeah, eventually— We just, we just sort of kept at it and the physios, you know, they were just amazing. You know, they kept pushing you to your limits every day. And the nurses as well, you know, encouraging you to move. And that’s what it’s all about. You’ve just got to try and get up and move and, to get things going again.  

So yeah, but yeah, eventually I think I left hospital on January 6, 2003. So, I was the last patient to leave hospital in WA.  

Liz MacLeod: And then when you left hospital, what happened then? Were there— Did you need to have more operations? You would have needed to continue your physio. I’ve got physio in my background so... 

Antony Svilicich: Well, that was just the start actually. Yeah. So, I had to go back to the hospital every day. So, um, usually it was a dressing change in the morning in the outpatient clinic. Then it was a bit of OT therapy and then some, ah, hand therapy, and then physio in the afternoon. So, you’d sort of spend the whole day at the hospital and then, yeah, go home. And that sort of went on for twelve months, roughly. Yeah.  

So, I was off work for about twelve, thirteen months, I think, just going through rehab and having more surgery as well. Since then I think I've had about twenty-eight operations over the last twenty years. Just mainly, um, scar revision and that sort of thing and fixing things up. So yeah, it’s been quite a journey.  

Liz MacLeod: Yeah, so, certainly an intense period that doesn't stop just as soon as you leave hospital as, I suppose, as people often think once you've left hospital, that's it. But it’s— You certainly had a very intense period for a period after that. So, if we look now, and we're twenty years on, how do you think the events of Bali have shaped your life and the way you live now? 

Antony Svilicich: Um, yeah, I think, sort of— When I went to Bali I sort of, you know, young. Twenty-five at the time, and you sort of, you know, you sort of think you're invincible. You’re sort of, ah, you know, young and having a good time and that, and then sort of this happens and you think, oh, wow. You know, you sort of realise that, you know, you've got a sort of lease on life and you know, it can sort of end at any time. Sometimes it gets renewed. Other times it doesn’t.  

So, you certainly become more socially aware, you know, of things in the world and that. And you know, we live in this big wide world and things that happen, you know, on the other side of the world can affect us here and that. 

So, yeah, I’ve sort of become more community-minded over the years and taking on quite a bit of volunteering in the community and that, with various organisations. So, I’ve found that to be quite useful in my recovery, you know. Going from being a person that needed help then to sort of be in a position where you could help others. I think that sort of really helped with my psychological recovery as well. Bbrns isn't just about the physical injuries. It's what happens up here as well. So, being able to help others has been really beneficial in my recovery. 

Liz MacLeod: And so what sort of volunteering is it that you've been able to do? And that helping others is a fantastic thing. Do you want to tell us more about that? 

Antony Svilicich: Yes. I started off volunteering for a group called Fishability, which takes disabled people out fishing on the Swan River and that, on the boat. 

And that was a real eye-opener because, you know, there was people there that were, you know, it was quadriplegics and paraplegics and tetraplegics and, you know, people suffering from all of these sort of terrible life-long conditions, you know. 

And it sort of put things into perspective for me, thinking, well, you know, I'm actually not that bad. You know, I've got all my limbs intact. I'm able to work. I’m able to do all these things, you know? And so that was really helpful. 

And then I sort of moved on and started with a local community group in my area and that. So, I'm still involved with that. And also volunteering with Neighbourhood Watch as well. So that's quite, ah... Keeps me busy, I guess. Yeah. 

Liz MacLeod: That's absolutely fantastic. You give so much back. Thank you. So, Vij, twenty years on, what are you up to? 

Vijith Vijayasekaran: So, ah, I'm obviously a consultant plastic surgeon now. Priya is a consultant anaesthetist. Priya works mainly at PCH. I work at PCH as well. So, I do cleft lip and palate— Part of our specialty, the two surgeons that do the cleft lip and palate surgery at PCH and our private practice. 

We have, ah, three girls who keep us busy with balancing that and our work lives. So, yeah, that's what we're up to at the moment.  

Liz MacLeod: And did the events of Bali in any way influence your life, personally or professionally?  

Vijith Vijayasekaran: So, I think— I get asked that question a lot. We would— Firstly, we went into the situation, we didn't think anything different other than we were just doing our job. 

So, I always people tell who ask me that. It was, to us, it wasn't anything extraordinary. We were just in a place that we had to do our job, and that's what we did medicine for, was to help people. So, from that point of view, we weren't really doing anything extraordinary. 

We also had each other there, which is the other thing that made it different for us, we feel. Firstly, that we were doing what we did every day. So, it was difficult for other doctors and nurses who were in that situation when it wasn't what they did every day. We were used to seeing ninety percent burns roll through the door.  

So, dealing with that, you know— If you haven't seen a ninety percent burn and you don’t know how to manage it from a critical care point of view and a plastic surgery point of view, it is pretty eye-opening and daunting and stressful. And so, a lot of the— We dealt with it psychologically, I think, a lot better because it was what we did, but also because we had each other to, to debrief. 

I don't think it changed us doctors other than to reinforce what we did every day and why we went into medicine. What it did probably change was that we set the bar— And Fiona's daughter's probably experienced this, ‘cause she trained under us. We set the bar very high for our trainees and it's because of our Royal Perth training. The bar was high and that's what gave us the ability to jump into a situation and to do what we did with the resources that we had. <clears throat> 

And I always tell our trainees, you know, you've got to be prepared for everything. There's no time when you're in the moment, for feeling sorry for yourself or reflecting on how bad the situation is. When you're in the moment at work, you've just got to do what you're there to do, and everyone's relying on you.  

And I think that's probably how it's trained us, ah, changed us too. We probably set the bar pretty high for our trainees. Fiona, probably. And that was from good example. You know, we had people like Fiona, who has set the bar high for us and you never know when your skills are going to be needed. 

Liz MacLeod: And what do you think you learned about yourself during this? 

Vijith Vijayasekaran: Um. Look, again, what did I learn about myself? We were, we were glad. We were glad that we had the training that we had. We were glad that we had each other. And we've been together since we were seventeen, since first year of med school. 

So, I— Look, and for us, we did what we did and we had to get on with our lives. We were both trainees. We had exams to sit. It probably made us softer inside, but we were always, I guess, that way. You probably could— <clears throat> You know. We worked hard and we continue to work hard doing what we do.  

Liz MacLeod: And, I have to ask, what did your parents do when they found out that you’d gone to help?— 

<audience laughter> 

Isn’t that the question we all wondered? 

Vijith Vijayasekaran: So, on the way, we were in the taxi back into the hospital. They rang us again just wanting to know what we were going to do, and Priya said to me— Mum was like, “What are you up to?” And I'm like, “We’re fine.” And then Priya said, “You can't lie to your parents. <laughs> They need to know where you’re going.” So, we did tell them. But yeah, they were obviously anxious for the day, as you would be. 

Liz MacLeod: And Fiona, so Bali and the events in Bali have had a big impact on your life and led to some exciting things and around the foundation. What have been your key learnings from the Bali tragedy about yourself and about your patients? And is anything in your life changed as a consequence? 

Fiona Wood: Well, yes, I think I came to the— I absolutely believe fundamentally that you come to the table to put your A game on the table, and— I'm sorry if I was a hard taskmaster but I knew, <Liz laughs> I recognised my tribe. Yep. And so we had, to that point at Royal Perth, we have been driving very aggressively a system, a model of care for burns, that we had one idea only: that it would be the best in the world. 

And that was what we were driving. Not just myself, but the whole team. That vision, that is still there, is scarless healing, inside and out. And so, in that context, we were pretty insular, to be perfectly honest. We were head down, bum up, working way really hard and, if I'm brutally honest, I wasn't paying much attention to the rest of the world around because it was all-consuming. 

And so, when this happened, the window to our world opened. It became apparent that we were doing things that were a bit different. It became apparent to me that there was a lot of good out there. And that's how it changed me, in that I'd been working away with a lot of good, with a great team, a lot of— Tight.  

And then, all of a sudden, I saw people looking after, looking after relatives that they didn't know, making sure people were okay, making sure we were fed. All these things. And I saw all these good news stories coming from all over the place, all over Australia, and I thought, why is it that we spend so much time on the negative? You know, why? There's so much good out there. 

And so, I became a real advocate for the good news story, and I still am. I always try and go out there and drive the good news side of things. Go drive the humanity in people. Drive what is good about us and what our capability is. 

I mean, and as an example more recently, I've been driving across the research, medical research across Australia. This year I was in a position of having my voice heard, and so I said, well, we've got to start a ‘yes’ campaign. I don't want to hear ‘no’. Putting ‘no’ on the table is not an option. I want to hear ‘yes.’ 

And that doesn't mean you're committed to doing the job. What it means is you’re saying ‘yes’ to a young researcher and you're connecting them with the literature. You're connecting them with somebody else. You're giving them the belief that their voice is of worth. 

So, that, instead of walking away disgruntled and never having another idea articulated again, you're bringing it out to the fore. You're saying ‘yes.’ And the more we all say ‘yes’, then the better we will all be, right? 

So, I don't think I got to that point, and I don't think maybe I would have got to that point, if this didn't happen to me twenty years ago. Because I think we can all be better. And I saw, not long after, the tsunami. In Melbourne, they filled the [Melbourne Cricket Ground] to raise fourteen million [dollars] for people they will never see. There is nothing other than fundamental good there, in my view. 

I mean, another thing. Giving back. You know, I've seen this young man performing with those cleft lip and palette kids. I worked with Priya, who keeps me to task on pain management in the burn kids. You know, and so I know there's a lot of good out there, but we spend too much time getting [to] wallow in the negative. 

And so that's how I fundamentally changed, because instead of keeping tight and just the team— The walls of the team got exploded, if you like. But it also made me look at what was going on around me in a way that I would never have engaged in, I don't think, otherwise. 

Liz MacLeod: And you're right, the community does come together and demonstrate so much goodness in these trying times. And it exists all the time. We just don't, we just don't see it. 

Fiona Wood: Yeah. Ian Gollow, who is the paediatric surgeons, says to me three weeks after, he said, “We've lived through something quite extraordinary. Have you ever been in a situation at work where everybody every day has said, ‘Yes. How can I help? What would you like me to do?’” Yeah. It was just special. 

And I've kind of, I suppose, I've tried to drive really hard to make it not special, to make it business as usual. And it's hard, because we live in a very complex system, but it's worth trying. 

Liz MacLeod: Absolutely. Thank you for that. And I might now just move to yourselves and see if you've got any questions that you'd like to ask the panel? There’s a couple of roving mikes there. 

Fiona Wood: It feels like we're in a living room around the fire. It’s so cosy— <laughs> 

Liz MacLeod: Some pretty extraordinary people who have just told some remarkable stories... 

Audience member 1: <inaudible> 

Fiona Wood: I think it gave us opportunities to explore. Yeah. One of the things that was quite difficult at the time—‘cause we were working really hard—and when we emerged a few weeks later, we there was a bit of a kerfuffle around the spray-on skin story, but we had been working on— We'd been using the spray-on skin cells since 1995 and so it was part of our model of care. And so, it was part of what we were doing.  

So, we were on this very, this very sort of relatively steep trajectory of introducing new things, not just in the wound care but in the dressings and the infection control and the pressure garments, how they were designed and all that kind of thing, and how the physio was done. 

So, every one of the streams was in a sort of advancing trajectory, if you like. What Bali did was, people— One of the things that's really hard in burns is to measure outcome because, you can imagine, ten people will have a burn of twenty percent body surface area and we will follow along the very best we can, but there will be ten people with ten different outcomes. So, how do you measure that and then put that into the context? 

And so, post-Bali, we were able to, we were funded to build the outcomes project—BCORP, Burns Clinical Outcome [Research] Project—which was a fundamental sort of cornerstone of our research. So, we have data now, really rigorous data, of many thousands of burn patients over their trajectory. 

And so now, if you look back twenty years, we are now in a situation with all these newer technologies like machine learning, artificial intelligence. We can start to use all that sort of stuff because we have that data. 

And that data informed how we should move forwards, as well. So, we were funded and that came from Telstra and LotteryWest, and the Health Department, of course. And so, and then we were able to build an information management system, and so all this started to inform the research that we were doing that has been very multidisciplinary across the board.  

So, if I can sort of slice across twenty years later, as it were, we've got work in un-scarring the scar with laser and with a new drug that we've done the first human trials with now. We have work in what we call intelligent knife and this is really new where we are—and it’s still in trial in the lab—where we cut through skin and we can tell the chemistry of what we're cutting through, real time. And so that’s hugely exciting. 

And that skin chemistry is another one of our streams that we can use to predict outcomes. We can understand a whole lot about people from their skin chemistry, and so, building— All this is built from that point.  

There’s five streams. So, I’ve got two down. You've got to listen to the other three. One of those things is how the brain influences outcome. And so we've got a grant at the moment where we're stimulating the brain with transcranial magnetic stimulation and that changes brain plasticity such that the hypothesis is that the outcome will improve. That started twenty years ago where I can tell you if you're burnt here, your nerves will change here. Your cell bodies near your spinal cord will change. Your brain will change. That started then and it's culminating now. 

The other thing is, the skin cell story goes on. We spray cells on, yes, but we can— What we want to do is spray on the whole framework of skin. So, we've got a 3D robotic printer in trial at [the University of Western Australia] where we hope to be first to human next year, where we're— Not just the cells but the framework so we can repair the whole of the skin. 

And the last thing, which is a story that, again, started at that time was our understanding that surviving a major burn can influence the rest of your life. And so, we have a biobank at the children and the adult hospital and we're starting to understand that, in addition to this physical scar and the psychological scar, there is a physiological scar in your cells, in your blood. And understanding that— And some fascinating similarities with long COVID, interestingly, because we're working at the same bench with those people. We go, “Oh, that looks like ours.” 

And so that’s really has pushed our research forward. But understanding how this burn injury puts people in a pressure cooker—if you excuse the analogy—where the information is massive, and so it unmasks other things. 

And so, understanding that means we can treat differently from the outset. But I cut across those five streams of research that we're sort of internationally known for because all that follows all the way back. And you don't get to there without this. And so— My apologies for the long answer <laughs> but I can talk until you turn to dust about research. 

<audience laughter> 

Audience member 2: <inaudible> 

Fiona Wood: <laughs> Well, it's really interesting and funny at the moment because we've stopped talking about retirement, my husband and I. We talk redeployment. And the kids are actually howling with laughter because, contrary to popular belief, I've been a pretty hands-on mum as well along the way with the six kids. And I've started making jewellery because I've been taught how to make jewellery in ... school techniques with all the little tools and everything. I really like it. And my husband goes, “Isn't it good your mum's got a hobby now?” 

<audience laughter> 

Fiona Wood: Back up the truck! Excuse me! <laughs> So, it's interesting. So, I don't see that jewellery is my retirement strategy at all. I think the research I've— I've been privileged, over the last two, couple of, almost three years now. We have a paediatric Centre of Excellence in [Childhood] Burn Injury funded by the [Stan Perron] foundation. And that's been the first time we've really been able to fund my time for research. 

And so, we've been able to build the burns clinical team so that I actually do more research. And so that's my redeployment is understanding the tomorrow stuff and trying to understand how maybe one day where we understand the brain enough, we'll able to think ourselves whole. You know, that'd be cool, wouldn't it? Yeah.  

Audience member 3: <inaudible> 

Antony Svilicich: Yeah. Yeah. I've been back [to Bali] twice. First for the tenth anniversary, and then back in 2018. They had a counter-terrorism summit over there so I did a speech over there. At that time we were trying to build the Bali Peace Park, so we were trying to get a bit of support for that. Yeah, but that was really good to go back and sort of retrace my steps on the night and ah, fill in all the gaps and blanks that I had, so that was, it was good. 

Liz MacLeod: Good. 

Audience member 4: <inaudible> 

Vijith Vijayasekaran: We went, Priya and I went back for the first year anniversary, which was something that was really good. You know, people talk about closure. Prior to that, I never believed in closure. I thought it was just one of those terms we throw around. But going back and seeing the patients that we treated, seeing the people that helped us, was really good. 

Prior to that, pretty much every day you would think about the day, and you would think about how you could have done things differently. If we'd done things differently, would it have changed the outcome? But after that, we stopped thinking about it, and it was almost like that event, yeah, it was like a line, it was amazing. So, we went back then. I've been back briefly, transiting on a mission through to one of the islands. 

But Priya hasn’t been back. First trip back is next year, the two of us. Kids are old enough to leave behind. Yeah. Child-free. So, we’ll go for a few days. And then we've always wanted to take the kids there at some stage. You know, it's a good holiday and nice and close to Perth, so we will take them next year at some stage. 

Fiona Wood: I have never been to Bali and I think as the years have gone by, I find it harder to talk about it, and I don’t think I ever will. 

Audience member: <inaudible> 

Liz MacLeod: Any other questions for these three pretty extraordinary human beings? Despite what they themselves say, that they’re not. I think they might be. <laughter> 

So, if there’s no other questions, I just want to thank the three panel members here for sharing some very deeply personal experiences. And while we've heard about the remarkable recovery of Antony today, and the dedication and care of the medical teams comprising Fiona and Vij, I think it's also important to always remember the lives lost in this tragedy: the Australians, the Balinese, and those from all corners of the globe. And I ask that we all just reflect on the many people who lost loved ones as we leave today. 

So, both Fiona and Antony have recently published books and I have copies of them here today if you'd like to purchase them; or, if you've already purchased one, you can get it signed. And a reminder, as I mentioned earlier, there is an exhibition in the Old Gaol which is just down that way—I'm very bad with directions as you will have just realised—it's just that way about a hundred metres. So, it's not far at all and definitely worth seeing. 

And can I just ask that we all put our hands together for our panel, Fiona, Vij, and Antony. 

<audience applause>  

So, thank you all very much and please make sure you get home safely. Thank you.