Shortcut: Forgotten Bombs: The Other Bali Bombings

Summary

Australian True Crime – Shortcut: Forgotten Bombs: The Other Bali Bombings

Date: January 5, 2026
Host: Meshel Laurie (A)
Guest: Joe Frost (B), survivor and creator of "Forgotten Bali 2005" podcast

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Episode Overview

This episode centres on the often-overlooked second Bali bombings of 2005 at Jimbaran Bay and Kuta—three years after the infamous 2002 attacks. Survivor Joe Frost recounts the harrowing experience of witnessing the bombings firsthand as a young Australian travelling with a multi-generational group from Newcastle. The episode explores the immediate aftermath, the discrepancies in perception and reality, and the enduring trauma and memory gap associated with these attacks—an event largely absent from public consciousness.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Setting the Scene: The 2005 Bombings

• Background: After the 2002 Bali bombings, Australians quickly resumed travel to Bali. By 2005, a Newcastle teens’ trip evolved into a supervised holiday with over 40 people, including parents and young children.
• The Night of October 1st, 2005: The group dines at a popular Warung on Jimbaran Bay, nestled between major resorts, enjoying a typical beachfront meal (03:37).

2. The Bombings: Chaos and Confusion

• Sequence of Explosions:
  • A massive bang erupts to the north; immediate confusion ensues, with many assuming a simple gas explosion (04:41–05:13).
  • A second bomber targets Frost’s group at their table on the southern end—deliberately selecting “white people,” per recovered plans (08:55).
• Immediate Reactions:
  • Many rush toward the water in panic, unsure of the true danger.
  • Frost’s account emphasizes how the mind defaults to denial in crisis, downplaying the threat to maintain calm (05:32).
  • “No, no, it's probably just a gas bottle exploding from one of the barbecues. Stay calm.” – Joe Frost (05:32)

3. Surviving the Attack: Sensations and Survival

• Physical and Psychological Impact:
  • Frost describes feeling “face down in the sand,” confused, in shock, and convinced his legs were on fire—actually sand burns from the blast (07:03).
  • The group’s instinct is to search for loved ones amidst chaos: “I was in the water and I just started to yell her name...” (10:27).
• Memorable Quote:
  • “When something so otherworldly happens, your body goes into shock… your brain sort of says, yeah, it hurts, but we're not gonna, that's, that's not important right now. There's more important things.” – Joe Frost (06:07)

4. Aftermath: Searching, False Hope, and Grief

• The Search for Friends & Family:

  • Frantic attempts to locate one another—assuming the worst, fearing more devices (“it was a minefield… any one of these is another bomb…” 11:12).

• Kindness from Locals:

  • A Balinese man shelters the survivors, embodying compassion amid trauma (12:08).

• Dawning Realities:

  • Returning to the hotel, families reunite but misinformation circulates. Frost, not yet aware of the tragedy's depth, unwittingly reassures others with “false hope” (13:33).
  • At the hospital the next morning, the truth emerges: severe injuries, deaths, and a stark contrast to previous optimistic assumptions.
  • “He described Paul Anasich as basically that he didn’t expect him to survive… And then he said, and Jennifer Williamson, she hasn’t survived. She passed away.” – Joe Frost relaying his father’s words (15:58)

5. Reflection: Memory, Media, and the "Forgotten" Nature of the Attacks

• Lack of Awareness:

  • The attacks fade from public consciousness compared to 2002:
    • “The more you listen to this podcast, the more you feel the pain of the title.” – Meshel Laurie (16:24)
    • Frost discusses how the attack targeted Australians (and “white people” per plans), yet the story has been largely overlooked.

• Depth of Research & Personal Impact:

  • Meshel praises Frost’s podcast for its in-depth investigation into the attackers, local and political context, and for giving voice to the survivors' trauma (16:30).

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the Sudden Violence:
  “And then the next thing I knew I was just face down in the sand. And it was pain but… your brain sort of says, yeah, it hurts, but... We'll deal the pain later.” – Joe Frost (06:07)

• On False Hope: “These guys have turned up with a bag full of fireworks and have given us the fright of our lives. But everyone’s okay, so you don’t need to worry about your parents.” – Joe Frost, reflecting on the night (14:15)

• On Repeating Trauma:
  “At that point we just said, look, dad, what's going on? And he proceeded to tell us that everything was not all right and that our assumptions of the evening before were pretty wide of the mark.” – Joe Frost (15:35)

• On the Importance of Remembering: “The more you listen to this podcast, the more you feel the pain of the title.” – Meshel Laurie (16:24)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:00 – Episode introduction, overview of 2002/2005 Bali bombings
• 02:14 – Setting of the trip, group makeup, atmosphere in Jimbaran Bay
• 04:41 – Description leading up to the first explosion, immediate confusion
• 05:32 – Panic vs. denial and “pop gun terrorist” disbelief
• 07:03 – Joe’s direct experience of the blast and resulting injuries
• 08:55 – Targeting of the group; description of bomber’s intention
• 10:27–11:12 – Searching for loved ones; walking through the “minefield”
• 12:08 – Hospitality from local Balinese family
• 13:33–14:15 – Misinformation, returning to hotel, “false hope”
• 15:35–15:58 – Reality revealed at the hospital; details of injuries and deaths
• 16:24 – Reflection on the episode’s title, importance of remembering
• 16:30–17:12 – Praise for Frost’s podcast and in-depth research

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Tone and Delivery

• First-person, reflective, and raw survivor testimony (Joe Frost)
• Empathetic, investigative, and context-providing host (Meshel Laurie)
• Unflinching in confronting trauma, but respectful and focused on narrative clarity

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Further Resources

• Joe Frost’s podcast: Forgotten Bombs, Bali 2005 (link provided in show notes)
• Support resources for trauma and grief: Lifeline, 1-800-Respect, 13Yarn (services listed at close)

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In Summary:
This episode powerfully revives the human and emotional reality of the 2005 Bali bombings through Joe Frost’s personal account. It highlights how major events become “forgotten” and underlines the importance of survivor voices in preserving the real, lived impact of international tragedies that touch even distant Australian suburbs.

Transcript

[A]

In 2002, Australia's favourite holiday destination, the Indonesian island of Bali, was rocked by three bomb explosions, one outside the Australian Embassy and two in the middle of the nightclub strip. 202 people were killed, including 88 Australians, and jihadist group Jamaaa Islamiyah claimed responsibility. Such is Australia's love affair with the island that by 2005, just three years later, tourism had largely resumed. A group of teenagers from Newcastle were determined to travel there, but rather than let them go alone, many of their parents decided to make the trip as well. In the end, the group numbered over 40, and many of them travelled to the picturesque Jimbarran Bay on the night of October 1st for dinner on the beach. That night, three more bombs were detonated at Jimbarran Bay. Joe Frost was one of the teenagers who organised the trip. He was on the beach of Jimbarran that night and he's produced a podcast about the experience called forgotten Bali 2005. He joins us on Australian True Crime to talk about it. This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung People of the Kulin Nation and a warning. This episode of the podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence.

[B]

It had started out as a group of mates who were sort of 16, 17 years old, and I got the version of it from the parents for the podcast and then sort of, which didn't make it to air was that I got the version from the boys themselves and I was like, oh, this is slightly different.

[A]

It was great because it also goes into, you know, it was only three years after the first bombings. And so I remember that period of time. I think I, you know, gave Bali a miss for maybe a year. Like, we, we got back to business as usual pretty quickly in terms of going to Bali, but I love that the boys, the kids, they're 17, they wanted to go by themselves. And the mums went, well, no, that's not happening. But as we do, they went, we'll come with you, we don't want you to miss out. We'll all go.

[B]

I was the oldest of my siblings that were there, but my youngest brother would have been 10 at the time. So, know, there were, there were kids, he would have been the youngest kid there, but, you know, sort of kids age 10 through to 17. And then myself and my friend Alita Letter wash, who was 21, I was 20, and then, you know, big group of parents, so all told, about 45 people on the Saturday we went and we did this cultural tour where we, you know, got on a bus and went off into the countryside there, sort of went up and went to the markets, went to Ubud and, you know, had this. What was it? It was a lovely day, but it was. It's a big day and obviously Bali is really hot. We got back to the hotel and the bus driver said, look, does, you know, as an added extra, would anybody like to go for dinner on Jimber and Bay? And, like, all the kids were just, like, hard. No. Yeah, absolutely not. Which, of course, understandable. And I think a bunch of the adults sort of said, yeah, like, let's go do that. So we all went along and there were. I think it was 16, like, parents, sort of people in. Aged in their 40s and 50s. And then a leader who, as I say, was age 21 and myself, and. Yeah, and I was 20 at the time. And so we went to. To one of the Warungs there called Nyoman.

[A]

It's like the tables and chairs are on the sand, and then when the. And then behind you up the top of the sand, there are the Warungs, they're called in Indonesian, the cafes. And each one of them selling lobster, fresh lobster, prawns, fish. So you're all sitting out on the sand on timber tables and chairs, and it's sort of nestled between two big resorts, isn't it? On one end you've got the Intercontinental, and on the other end you've got the Four Seasons. So that's where you guys went that night.

[B]

And so they came down, we ordered some food and drinks and they went off and they got some drinks. And then we. We waited for food and I guess we didn't get food, but we got drinks. And that became important because there were bottles and glasses on the table and I think the sun had set. And then. So I was facing away from the ocean. I was looking up, you know, inland and had the ocean at my back.

[A]

And.

[B]

And I just heard the. Just the loudest bang I'd ever heard in my life, going off to my left, which was up to the north of the beach. And I sort of scrambled to my feet and I gripped the top of my chair and Alita, who was the other one, who was 21, her parents were there, and she got up and ran. She sprinted off away from where the noise had gone off from that loud bang, had ran to the southern end of the beach.

[A]

What's really interesting to me when you talk about that moment is how many people assumed it wasn't a Bomb how people in your group, people on the beach, a lot of people thought it's a gas cylinder or something like that, wasn't it? There was quite a few moments of people kind of standing there chatting and wondering, what was that?

[B]

I think it was a response of like just trying to maintain calm. People are already. Because there's, you know, maybe hundreds if not a thousand people on the beach and a lot had immediately, you know, probably been close enough to know exactly what it was. So there was, it was a panic stricken situation, people screaming and running into the water and, you know, just getting out of there. Whereas, yeah, at our table, for the most part, you know, there had been the. No, no, it's probably just a gas bottle exploding from one of the barbecues. Stay calm. But we should probably start to think about getting out of here like the night's over either way. So to my left was, was the. Where the bomb had come from. And I'd been sitting next to Penny Anisich and her husband Paul came and stood behind her and just sort of put his, his hands sort of protectively on her shoulders as, as I recall it. And then to my right were Fiona and Colin Zelensky. And I wasn't looking at them, I was just looking towards where the blast had come from. And then the next thing I knew I was just face down in the sand. And it was pain, but you know, when something so otherworldly happens, your body goes into shock and it's like your brain sort of says, yeah, it hurts, but we're not gonna, that's, that's not important right now. There's more important things. We'll deal the pain later. And so I remember that it hurt, but that it wasn't a pain that I was particularly conscious of, but I was face down in the sand. I had no visual of what was going on. I just had that flash in my mind that I think anyone, you know, who's old enough to remember the sari club would have seen. And it was just that burning building. And I'm, I'm unable to see anything but, but I felt a burning sensation on my legs and it, and that fire in the sari club flashed through my mind and I thought, my legs are on fire. So I jumped up and I pulled off my board shorts and I sprinted into the water. Getting to the water, I sort of thought, all right, I'm safe now. And there were hundreds of people in the water, all screaming and yelling. And at that point it was just me. I'd lost everybody else that I'd been with. And I sort of had a moment to assess what was going on and I in that moment realized that I hadn't been on fire, I wasn't on fire. And what it turned out was that it had been. The sand had whipped up from the blast and had sprayed my legs and I'd got like sandblast from it. And, you know, it's a burn, but it's a friction burn, not a flame burn. But as a consequence, I was standing there in, yeah, just, just a pair of undies and my ripped up shirt.

[A]

What had happened in that period of time? As everyone is looking to the northern end of the beach where the first explosion had come from. Is that where you guys were? At the southern end, another bomber had approached your table, Is that right when you were looking the other way?

[B]

Yes. And so Obama had come up and look, what went through that person's mind in the final moments of his life, we'll never know. But in my research was found a copy of the plan that they were working off. And it had said explicitly, target white people. And so we had been, you know, a table of 20 white people. It seems logical that we had been a fairly clear target. And, and yeah, so this person walked up and, and wearing a, a bomb that was, it was full of shrapnel. And for years I had thought that it was a mixture of ball bearings and glass, but the glass had actually been the glass that had been on the table. So the bomb goes off, the glass smashes and, you know, blasts out along with the rest of it. And so because people had suffered glass cuts and had bits of glass, you know, lodged in their skin, but it turned out that had just been from the glass that had been on the table itself and rather it had been explosives and ball bearings that had been within the, the backpack itself. And, yeah, and went off at our table and, and, yeah, and killed three people. So I need to find other people. I need to find the rest of my group. And I guess most importantly for me was I needed to find a leader. Her mum and my mom are best mates. Her dad and my dad are best mates. She's, I don't know, 11 months older than me. I've known her my whole life. She's my oldest friend. You know, we're family. So I was in the water and I just started to yell her name and then I heard someone else yelling her name and I went splashing out of the water and followed the sound and I found her father, Datema, and, and and he grabbed me and we hugged, and he said, oh, those bastards. Then we had to walk through the tables. And those moments, walking through the tables, it was a minefield. Now, I know logically now, of course it wasn't. I was at no stage in any danger. But during those moments when I had thought that there had been bombs placed under the tables and there were all these dozens of tables, I was just like, any one of these is another bomb that's about to go off, and my footsteps could be the thing that sets it off. So that was, you know, the height of fear. And I remembered having a moment of, like, thinking that I was, what, 20 years old? And I thought, look, there have been people that, particularly in, say, in the First World War, who would have been my age and would have had bombs raining down on them from above every minute of every day for weeks, months, years on end. I just got to get through these tables. We'd sort of walk the beach to the point where we're like, there's nowhere else to go but to this, you know, whatever, to the Intercontinental. We walked in and said, look, you know, have you seen any more people looking like this? And they just thought they had no idea what had happened. We then thought we would cover the. The ground back to the car park along the road in case that had happened. And going that way, that's when the sirens, the cars, and it was. It was military. It wasn't like. I'm sure the police were there, too, but I recall military. And a young Balinese man came and translated for us. And it was made abundantly clear that we weren't going to be able to go through. And so this young Balinese man said, look, come to my place, you know, I'll get you a drink of water, and we'll work out what happens next. So he was. He was so kind and so generous bringing us into his home like that.

[A]

So Dietmar still doesn't know where his wife and daughter are, though, at this stage.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

From this man and his family's home. We got into a cab and drove back to the hotel. Just cars just pouring out of Cuda. And at that point, we'd heard there had been another bomb in Kuta. We got back to the hotel and. And my family were waiting, and, yeah, they were pretty obviously very emotional. They'd heard conflicting reports as to what had happened. There had been stories that I'd been accounted for. And then it had, you know, been said, no, no, he's not at the hospital. We don't know where he is. And so they'd been, um, obviously terrified. But I turned up, you know, in one piece. My dad is, is a doctor. And he immediately, you know, with the two of us accounted for, was just clicked into work mode and was like, I gotta go to the hospital, I need to help. So he jumped into the cab that we had been in and he made his way off to go and, and help with the situation medically. Throughout the course of the night, you know, kids came to me and said, look, have you seen my parents? And I just said to them, I haven't, I haven't seen anyone. But what I genuinely believed was, look at Dietmar, look at me. We're fine. Everyone that we've seen thus far and heard from thus far is okay. And I use the phrase pop gun terrorists. These guys have turned up with a bag full of fireworks and have given us the fright of our lives. But everyone's okay, so you don't need to worry about your parents. Your parents are going to be fine. And I, you know, look, I. There was no malice, but I relayed a lot of false hope to people, you know, regarding the state of people's health and, you know, their actual life at that stage. I woke up in the morning as, you know, sort of crack of dawn, and mom woke me and she just said, look, your father's at the hospital and he wants you to take the passports for everyone and go to the hospital. I went around and I, I collected the passports from the various rooms from the, the kids, you know, they gave me, their parents passports. And along the way I picked up Dietmar, who said he was coming with me, and. And Dane Griffiths, whose parents were in hospital as well. And he, he's my age. He was my best mate in primary school. So the three of us made our way into to Sangla Hospital, which is sort of in the heart of Denpasar. And we got out, it was probably about 7am, 7:30ish. And dad was waiting for us and he greeted us at the taxi and gave us a hug and walked us through. And we got to sort of the doors of the ward that he had been sort of put all the Aussies and our group in. And at that point we just said, look, dad, what's going on? And he proceeded to tell us that everything was not all right and that our assumptions of the evening before were pretty wide of the mark and that people were seriously injured. You know, a woman had lost her eye, her husband was blinded, and it didn't look like he'd ever regained sight. There were people that had been just peppered with shrapnel. And he described it as looking like they'd been blasted by a shotgun. He described Paul Anasich as basically that he didn't expect him to survive. And then he said, and Jennifer Williamson, she hasn't survived. She passed away.

[A]

So, again, the more you listen to this podcast, the more you feel the pain of the title.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, the Forgotten Bombs, you just. I feel like it keeps coming back to me. And the start of every show, you say the name again and it's like, oh, yeah, this is crazy that we don't. We aren't more aware of what happened. And the people that you talk to are so amazing. There's so much more in this podcast that we haven't covered, which is good news, because people need to go and make sure that they download and listen to your podcast. Forgotten Bombs, Bali 2005. As I said earlier, the research that you go into, into the bombers, into the political context, the regional context, it's a really impressive piece of work. Well done.

[B]

Thank you very much.

[A]

Thank you to our guest, Joe Frost. There's a link to his podcast in the show Notes. If you need support after listening to this podcast, you can call Lifeline on 131114 or contact 1-800-Respect on 1-800-737-732 or 1-800-Respect. Org au Indigenous Australians can contact 13Yarn on 139276 or 13yarn.org a.