The document provides an eyewitness account of the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. It describes arriving in the devastated city, with streets like a ghost town and entire areas where nothing remained standing. Over 100,000 people were killed when 30-meter waves hit the city. The document details some of the grim tasks of recovering and burying bodies, as well as signs left by desperate families searching for missing loved ones. It conveys the immense destruction but also the resilience of survivors who continued on with their lives amid the trauma.

1. REMEMBERING ACEH
11th January, 2005.
It's four o'clock in the morning. I can hear a motor vehicle outside the blue tarpaulin flap which
covers the hole where the window should be in this half-built house. It sounds like it's next to my
head. People are walking around in the blackness and the mud outside. The city is awake
already. Then something else starts, something very different. From a distant minaret comes the
haunting call to morning prayers. Then another one starts. Within a few minutes, no fewer than
five chants are competing for attention.
I've been awake for more than an hour and I know I am not well. Semi-conscious, I become
aware of the sunrise and with it the rising of the others in the room. I peel away my thin cotton
sleeping sack and struggle to my feet. I feel awful. I make my way to the wash area of this
traditional Muslim house and with my stomach in the grip of some sort of iron fist, I crumple to
my knees over the Asian squat toilet and throw my heart up.
§
In late December 2004, a massive earthquake, which few will remember, was recorded off the
South East coast of New Zealand. Three days later, at the other end of the same tectonic plate,
a segment the size of California moved some 20 metres in the longest tremor ever recorded. It
set off a seismic wave which went around the planet but was particularly felt around the Indian
Ocean rim.
Until Boxing Day, 2004, Banda Aceh was a city of approximately 320,000, situated at the
northern tip of Sumatra. Largely unheard of and with no notable tourist attractions, it was a
busy, second world city which functioned independently of the West, which, in turn, was happy
in its ignorance. That day an earthquake of 9.1, the third strongest in recorded history, caused
multi-storey buildings to collapse like concertinas, entombing hundreds inside. They looked like
ghastly pancake stacks with reinforcing wire poking out like frayed rope. The minaret of the
central mosque was left at a drunken angle with huge cracks in it and bridges shifted so far that
they were no longer aligned with the roads they served. This was only the beginning.
Fifteen minutes later, the first of three waves, each about 30 metres high, smashed into Banda
Aceh with a force hitherto seen only in disaster movies. The low-lying reclaimed swamp land
around the city disappeared under this dreadful blanket of millions of tonnes of roiling, black
water which respected nothing and took everything.
Up to 100,000 citizens were killed at a stroke as these apocalyptic waves surged 12 kilometres
inland. Outside the city, whole villages simply ceased to exist and the truth is nobody will never
really know how many died that day, in Aceh or anywhere else.
Indonesia, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, Burma, Bangladesh, Somalia and Kenya were all
affected. Thousands of people were killed. The coastlines changed. Whole islands in the
Maldives disappeared and are now charted as sand bars and shallows. The entire planet rang
like a bell with the shock.

2. I was working over the Christmas period, covering the usual frivolities of the season and
whatever came with them. Ben and I both had the same reaction when we heard what had
happened. We both wanted to go. We knew it would be the biggest story we would ever cover
and that it would present personal challenges way beyond anything we had experienced before.
We also knew that we were technically qualified to do it.
We were not close but there was mutual respect. It would be hard to imagine two more different
people. I had taught him the intricacies of satellite transmission which would be an essential part
of this job. Confident, intelligent and a cool head in a crisis, Ben was the man I would have to
rely on more than any other in Aceh and it was he who took over when I became too ill to
continue.
But there was something else which transcended even that. I knew that, above all, this was a
humanitarian effort. I felt that there was something I could do to help, even if we were later
derided for not covering “the real story of Aceh”. It seemed to me our pictures would be the best
way to tell the world outside.
Aceh was a closed province. The Free Aceh movement had been fighting the government of
Indonesia for independence from this enormously diverse republic for over 20 years. Under any
other circumstances, we would not have been allowed in. Had we even mentioned the conflict,
there was every chance we would have been sent packing and the publicity so essential to the
effort would have been lost. But someone else always knows better.
We arrived to a city in total shock. The numbers of military aircraft at the airport testified to the
extent of the international aid effort but even with the best of intentions, it could never be
enough. The central city streets were like a ghost town. The 70 foot fishing trawler parked so
neatly outside the Suzuki dealer three kilometres inland was one of the few which escaped. The
rest of the fishing fleet had been smashed to matchwood under a bridge further up the road,
many of the crews still inside.
To the left of the central mosque was a vast area where almost nothing remained. Concrete
slabs testified to the hundreds of brick and concrete structures which once stood there. The
enormous canals which drained the monsoonal rain from the city were clogged with every
imaginable piece of human debris. There were trees, doors, whole rooves, masonry blocks,
furniture and even bodies. So complete was the destruction that in some places it was as
though nothing had ever been there.
Walls were pulverised by flying cars and other missiles propelled by the colossal force of the
waves. Only the plumbing remained of homes which it once served. Once the debris started
moving there was no stopping it. Someone had wisely bulldozed a road into the area and
everywhere either side of it there were signs from people desperately seeking information about
missing family members. They could be anywhere. Some were in Medan, most were dead.
It was Ben who found the photo album. Soggy and stained by red and pink chemicals, it was the
record of a family which in all probability no longer existed. Men, women, grandparents,
innocents, it was the only remaining evidence that any of them ever lived, loved, ate or slept.
Since few, if any, of their neighbours had survived to remember them, it would be their epitaph.
You smelt them before you saw them. Once exposed to it, the stench of rotting human flesh
never leaves you. Details of locals were allotted the dreadful task of removing them and already,

3. more than 40,000 had been buried in a mass grave on the road to the airport. Dragged limp,
black and slimy from the ruins of their homes, they were wrapped in black plastic and stacked
on the back of a truck.
Every day we drove down a road to what remained of the port, where the Australian Defence
Force was docked so that essential supplies and machinery could be moved in. Every day we
were greeted by the same man. In a black tunic, he lay in the foetal position in the middle of the
road and each day the thin skin receded a little further from the white bone of his skull as the
birds pecked away at him. And each day we drove respectfully around him until one of the body
details came and took him away.
We met these people one day. They did their job not wracked with pain or macabre satisfaction.
They were just doing their bit. Buoyed by whatever they gleaned from their faith, they went
about their business in a way which allowed them to separate themselves from their task. None
was unaffected. I have never understood how they did it.
Brendan Minogue was a cameraman working for the Today Show and his workload was
haphazard at best. He was assigned a driver because of his special requirements. Rizzo was
Acehnese and his phone seemed to be his best friend. After Rizzo had shown him his house,
Brendan assumed everything was alright. Brendan asked him about the pictures on his phone.
They were his family. “So they're okay?” he asked. “All gone”, said Rizzo. They had been in the
market place when the waves hit. “How do you carry on?” he asked. “What else can I do?” said
Rizzo. Brendan told me later, “I just had to remove myself from that situation before I lost it”.
The Australian Defence Force set up a water purification plant near the river and hundreds
queued there, plastic jerry cans in hand, waiting patiently for the water to be turned on. They
stood mostly in silence, occasionally noting the devastated shopping mall across the road.
Boarded up and off limits to all but the relevant authorities, it had been placed in the “Too Hard”
basket until the facilities were available to tackle it. Even the children were quiet. Hundreds of
people with hundreds of stories. As they got to the head of the queue, the soldiers filled their
expandable containers and with smiles exchanged, they went on their way.
Banda Aceh in its normal state is probably not very different from any other Asian city. Smoky,
dusty and plied by everything from diesel buses to noisy two stroke mopeds, it is more organic
than mechanical. But Banda Aceh in early 2005 was an organism which had lost more than a
third of its body, yet amazingly it still functioned.
With the high water mark in the city centre at the level of the second storey, the food and
vegetable market was moved to the suburbs while the clean-up got under way. People just went
about their business. Blatting around town on postie bikes with huge baskets of food on either
side, they pushed through the trauma barrier. They had survived but none got away unscathed.
Returning from the airport one day, the car in front suddenly came to a violent stop. Ben and I
tumbled from our seats as our driver skilfully avoided a crash. As we drove around the other
vehicle we saw him. With a long white beard and traditional Muslim robes he stood, arms
outstretched as if to embrace his fate, no more that a metre in front of the other car.
Aid workers and military forces were everywhere. American helicopters, Australian ships,
Russian aircraft, German and New Zealand soldiers rubbed shoulders with Singaporeans as
they pitched in to clean up the hospital. Médecins Sans Frontières, with their two-tone Rolex

4. watches and utility vests, were just arriving.
With babies being born and disaster victims requiring urgent treatment, the Germans had set up
a field hospital on what was originally the front lawn of the main hospital building. Of the 350
hospital workers, 25 had been accounted for. TNI soldiers were washing down the stainless
steel trolleys and attempting to squeegee the thin, slippery mud off the tiled walkways. Pools of
brown stagnant water ensured that we stuck to the path and only one TNI soldier ventured
beyond to wash his socks in the filth.
§
“Aceh is no place to be sick”, said the New Zealand army doctor. I lay on a hospital trolley with
Ben and reporter Nigel Blunden at the other end. The doctor probed my stomach. Gripped by a
spasm of pain, I became violently ill. “You probably got it from the mud. You shouldn't be here”.
Back at the house Nigel made arrangements for me to leave. Despite living in the chook shed in
the back yard, Dona and her mother had done everything they could for us. Dona had her own
children to take care of but the two of them had cooked and cleaned for up to 23 people,
including me, who had sought refuge in the house. They had lost their own home but never
complained. I hated leaving them this way.
A rich, white westerner, I was lucky. I came home to the best medical treatment and offers of
counselling. The Acehnese never had it that good. I was angry. Someone surely died of what I
had. I will never know who. Back home I was immersed in the vapidities of iPods and
superannuation controversy and I hated myself. I hated my friends too.
I recovered after four weeks in a darkened room and four months off work. Counselling was a
waste of time. Memories of the Acehnese people were all I needed. Dona's mother, clothed
from head to toe in black with her toothy grin and bony fingers. Their children, who made us
laugh when we needed it and the people of Aceh who, when faced with the unthinkable, pushed
on through intolerable pain and did their best.

5. REFERENCES
United States Geological Survey, Astonishing Wave Heights Among the Findings of an International
Tsunami Survey Team on Sumatra, retrieved 2 June 2011:
http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/2005/03/
Ibid, USGS Geologist Invited to Map Tsunami Impacts in the Maldives, retrieved 2 June 2011:
http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/2005/03/fieldwork3.html
Ibid, Indian Ocean Earthquake Triggers Deadly Tsunami, retrieved 2 June 2011:
http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/2005/01/
Ibid, Magnitude 9.1, retrieved 2 June 2011,
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqinthenews/2004/us2004slav/
The USGS website is one of the most authoritative sources on the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami. It
was quoted extensively at the time. It contains scientific research and photographic evidence of
the impact of both the earthquake and the tsunamis which followed it. Anyone wanting specific
and detailed information on the subject would do well to read it because it is an excellent
background to this story.
I used it to refresh my memory of the specific details which I used in my descriptions of the
actual seismic events.

6. I should also cite the many hundreds of photographs taken by my assistant, Ben Fogarty. These
were an invaluable tool which brought back so many memories of the people we dealt with and
the things we saw. As Ben is now stationed in Sydney, it was impossible to have long
conversations with him but I did talk with him extensively over the phone. His memories are the
same as mine and the incidents I have described here were the things he remembered too.
Also interviewed was Brendan Minogue. Brendan had a different experience from us. He was
there longer than we were and his work hours were more chaotic. Journalist Brett McLeod was
also informally interviewed – he was actually on holidays when I spoke to him. All three of us
agreed that the strength of the Acehnese people was what got us through. None of us feels
traumatised by what we went through. In fact, we all agree it was an uplifting experience.
In a longer assignment it would be possible to show this anecdotally but there are so many
aspects to this story that it would be almost impossible to do that without including many others.
For practical reasons it was impossible.