Australians head back to Bali
February 6th, 2009
WITH the lead bombers executed, Australians are partying harder than ever in Kuta. But as well as hedonism, Jakarta correspondent Stephen Fitzpatrick finds guilt, heroism, honour and tenderness twisted into the ties that bind Australia and its northern neighbour. Here is an extract from his story in tomorrow’s Weekend Australian Magazine:
BALI is again full of Australians: surfing, drinking, taking drugs, falling off motorbikes, meditating, practising yoga. Each one living, in their own way, the Bali experience.
Kerobokan jail, on the fringe of the action-packed Kuta-Legian-Seminyak tourist strip, plays a key part in the Australia-Bali story.
AUDIO: Stephen Fitzpatrick on Aussie-Bali tourism Ever since the arrests that followed the Paddy’s Bar and Sari Club bombings, through to Schapelle Corby’s 2004 arrest for marijuana smuggling, underwear model Michelle Leslie’s a little while later for ecstasy possession, the Bali Nine’s for their ill-conceived smuggling attempt, the second bombing in 2005 and even the recent execution of Bali bombers Imam Samudra and co, its importance has steadily grown in the Australian imagination.
But there are other obvious loci of the relationship: the still-empty land on the site of the old Sari Club; the nearby monument to the lives lost in the bombing, which has become such a magnet for visitors that it arguably fulfi ls some of the same mythmaking and national identity role that places such as Gallipoli and the Kokoda Track perform for Australians elsewhere; even the pumping nightclub scene on this strip, which is busier now than it was before the bombing, a post-2002 tourist slump well and truly over.
There are many reasons for Australians to visit Bali, but the traditional sun-sand-and-sex tour to Kuta has, since the early ’70s at least, undeniably been higher on the list than any notion of nurturing a bilateral connection. A night out in this zone of hedonism is everything it ever was and then some: drugs, drink and picking up. Party until you drop – which is exactly the scene the bombers wanted to strike because they knew it would have the biggest impact.
Australian tourist arrivals are well above pre-2002 levels, according to figures from the Bali Tourism Board. Slightly fewer than 240,000 visited Bali in 2001. Last year the number topped 300,000. The big difference between pre and post-bombing tourism is that a trip to the Island of the Gods, whether on the good-time trail or with more sedate aims, now invariably includes a stop at the bombing memorial.
Ground Zero, as the locals call it, is just a hop down the road from the jail. The bomb site and memorial there reminds the Balinese – who believe deeply in karma and therefore blame themselves, rather than the bombers, for the tragedy – of their vulnerability to hatred.
For Australians the emotional cues vary, but strong in the mix is a surprisingly familiar theme of fallen comrades and of drunken bravado. Of war heroes, in fact.
Outsiders might scoff, and traditionalists recoil, but there is something of the Anzac myth being perpetuated daily at this intersection of two Balinese roads, at the precise point on Jalan Legian where Paddy’s Bar and the Sari Club once faced each other.
“It really is a bit like Gallipoli in the ways it has meaning for Aussies,” offers I Nyoman Darma Putra, a lecturer in Indonesian literature at Bali’s Udayana University, with a PhD from the University of Queensland.
Read Stephen Fitzpatrick’s full story - including his his game of tennis with one of the bombers and his interview with Bali’s new governor - in The Weekend Australian Magazine.
Source: www.theaustralian.news.com.au
Entry Filed under: Bali Tourism News
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