By Jordan Baker
Hanabeth Luke has travelled to Bali for the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attack.Credit:Nick Moir
On a trip to Bali, Marc Gajardo had one of the best surfs of his life. He planned to go out again the next day but never did. One of his boards still sits out the back of his parents’ house. “As ridiculous as it sounds, we said to ourselves, ‘Marc has gone surfing’,” his mother Carole says, of the long struggle to comprehend the death of her son.
Gajardo left the Sari Club dance floor as Cher’s Do You Believe in Life After Love began playing. “I’ll see you in a bit,” he told his girlfriend, Hanabeth Luke, who kept dancing. Then a bomb exploded. Luke could not find him. She stopped to help 17-year-old Tom Singer, and the image of Luke supporting the bloodied boy as they stumbled out of the inferno was published around the world.
Hanabeth Luke with Tom Singer moments after the blast. The Herald is running the picture with permission from Singer’s family.Credit:Scope Features
But Singer died too, a month later, leaving another family struggling to comprehend a senseless loss. Luke became the last link to their sons. Twenty years on, she remains close to both families. “She’s a wonderful person,” Peter Singer, Tom’s father, tells the Herald. “She’s smart and considerate and interested. She sees us. She has a lovely family. I guess there’s some positive things that come out of a tragedy like this.”
Luke is now an academic at Southern Cross University. She is married with children. After 20 often-difficult years, she has come to terms with what happened that night in Bali, when three terrorist bombs, two in busy nightspots, killed more than 200 people. “Certainly, as the years go on, I feel more at peace with the experience,” she says.
“I’m able to reflect and say, ’yes, that was huge, and it had a massive impact on my life, but also reflect that gratitude that I’ve survived and have been able to live a full life. That I’ve been able to connect with Marc’s parents, Tom Singer’s parents. But it’s still very sad.”
Luke grew up in Byron Bay, and considered Bali a second home. She was 20 when she went to Cornwall to visit her grandmother and met Gajardo, a local mechanic who loved playing the guitar. She taught him to swim and surf. “My first big love,” she says.
He would have celebrated his 50th this year. “That’s 20 years of birthdays he never got to have,” she says. “Those long-term affects are hard. People don’t just lose their child, they lose the grandchildren [they might have had]. It’s an unnatural order of things.” But she has come to understand that, while we cannot put things back the way they were, “you can regenerate. You can strive for a positive future”.
Luke has told her children about Bali, and those who died there. “Every year, mummy goes to the beach and has a surf and remembers Marc,” she tells them. “It’s important to remember and part of that is sharing.”
Carole Gajardo remembers the call from Luke at 3am to tell her and husband Ray about the blast. “It was a terrible shock,” she says. “I couldn’t quite believe it. I thought they’d got it all wrong. For about two or three months, we were just totally out of it – couldn’t function. We’ll never forget. We miss him dreadfully.”
Their ongoing contact with Luke has been a comfort. “She was in a terrible place for quite a long time, then she met her gorgeous husband, brought him over here to introduce him to us, and we thought, ‘what a lovely chap’. Marc and he would have got on like a house on fire. She’s got two children, we have lovely photos.
Bali bombing survivor Hanabeth Luke with her boyfriend Marc Gajardo, seen here in Bali just days prior to the blasts. Marc died as a result of the attacks.
“We feel we’re very fortunate to have such a lovely person to remember Marc.”
Tom Singer was in year 11 at Marist College in Pagewood Sydney when he went to Bali. It was his first overseas trip, and he’d marked the date of departure on the family calendar. “Did somebody say Bali?” he wrote, gently mocking his siblings. He too was a surfer, and had been a lifesaver at Coogee.
He suffered shrapnel wounds and burns to his lungs and almost two-thirds of his body. Over a month, he underwent a gruelling series of skin grafts. While he hovered between life and death, Luke kept an online vigil from England, emailing his family every day. When he died she was devastated, her father, Doug, said at the time. “I think if he’d lived it’s something she could have taken some comfort in.”
Hanabeth Luke helped Tom Singer out of the inferno in Bali. He died a month later.
For Singer’s father, Peter, “it doesn’t feel like 20 years. At certain times, it feels like yesterday. We never forget him, you know. He was our middle child, and the most lovable, beautiful child you could possibly imagine.”
On Wednesday, the Singers will join other families at the memorial service at Coogee. The Gajardos will lay flowers at Marc’s favourite spot, an old Cornish engine house near their home. And Luke will join the mourners in Bali. “I feel like the island’s calling me back,” she says. “It’s been close to my heart forever. I feel a need to be there.”
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