31 Australians died in the
2011-2012 financial year in Bali - an average of one Australian death in the
balmy paradise every nine days
CHRISTINE Ovenden still doesn't know
what really happened to her son, more than a year after he was killed.
What she does know is that Mark was found by locals on a
remote track near a quarry in the upmarket resort area of Nusa Dua in Bali on
June 21, 2012. His rented motor scooter lay beside him, and at first it looked
like the 33-year-old Sunshine Coast man must have had a motorbike accident,
another victim of the Indonesian island's notoriously poor backroads. But it
soon became apparent that while the popular surfer from Alexandra Headland
south of Maroochydore on the Sunshine Coast was indeed a victim, it was of
something far more sinister than substandard road conditions. He had been badly
beaten and asphyxiated, his killer or killers still not known.
Mark was one of 31 Australians who died in the 2011-2012
financial year in Bali - an average of one Australian death in the balmy
paradise every nine days. It's a sobering figure, and one the Department of
Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) is quick to point out is largely made up of
deaths from natural causes, such as old age or illness; or from misadventure,
such as motorbike accidents. Just last month, Gold Coast surfing identity Allan
Byrne, 64, founder of the Byrning Spears surf label, died in a Bali hospital
following a motorbike accident - his death one of a reported average of three
motorcycle fatalities a day on the island. However, for some fatalities
resulting from misadventure or unnatural causes, DFAT says it is unable to
provide an official cause of death because in some cases it remains unknown, or
the families of the deceased do not want the information released.
For many travellers to Bali - and there were almost 3
million international visitors last year, a third of them Australian - it
remains a beautiful, safe haven, just a few hours' flight away. They travel in
droves to this small, 5780 sq km island in the Indian Ocean to return home a
week or so later with sun-kissed skin, braided hair, memories of Bintang beers
on the beach, meandering motor scooter rides to the clear, mountain air of
Ubud, or surfing the famed left reef break at Uluwatu.
But for others, such as Mark Ovenden, there proved to be a
darker side. More than a year after his death, his family and friends are still
searching for answers, frustrated by conflicting reports from Indonesian
authorities and what they see as little help from DFAT. They are still asking
what happened to their son, brother and friend after his Bali adventure came to
a lonely end by the side of a dirt road.
"THE crime scene had been trampled, absolutely
trampled," Mark's mother Christine Ovenden says, her voice shaky, her
hands twisting a white tissue. "When his body was found, there were
onlookers prodding at him, some I believe taking photos, and apart from the
fact I can't bear to think of him being violated in that way, any evidence that
might have helped in the investigation was completely compromised."
Christine, a smart, articulate executive assistant in a
large Queensland company, finds it very difficult to talk about her son. She
describes him as "a very loving, gentle man who only ever saw the best in
people". But she is telling her story to Qweekend because she wants others,
particularly young people, to be aware of the dangers in Bali, the ones not
shown by companies urging young travellers to "come party in
paradise".
"I think Bali is a wonderful place, and Mark loved it
and its people - he had a lot of Balinese friends," Christine says.
"But there is another layer to it, one where people get robbed, or mugged,
or drugged, or beaten, or in Mark's case, murdered, and the aftermath is not
like when these things happen at home. One of the hardest things for us to cope
with, quite apart from losing Mark, has been trying to negotiate our way
through the misinformation - or no information - about what happened to
Mark."
What the family has been able to piece together about Mark's
last days is he arrived in Bali on June 16, 2012, for a two-week surfing
holiday with a mate, and for the first few nights they stayed in Poppies Lane,
Kuta Beach. They then moved south to a villa at the well-known surfer haven of
Bingin. On the afternoon of their first day there, Mark left on his motor
scooter, telling his friend he was going to pick up his surfboard from a
friend's place and that he would be back later that evening.
He never came back, and the first Christine knew anything
was amiss with her son was when she received what she calls a
"strange" phone call from a former Balinese girlfriend of Mark's on
the evening of June 21, who told her in a hushed voice that he had been in an
accident, and was in hospital in Denpasar. "Then she hung up, and I've
never heard from her again," Christine says.
About 6.30pm that night, Christine's daughter and her
husband opened their Sunshine Coast home's door to some good friends of Mark's,
local surfers, who told them of Mark's death in Bali. "It was on the
internet before there was anything official, and I then rang DFAT, who
confirmed my son's death to me," Christine recalls. "They said,
'Haven't the police been to see you?' and
I said, 'No-one has contacted me at all'."
The anger and frustration are still evident in Christine's
voice as she recounts the next few days, and her panicked trip to Bali with her
daughter, to try to discover what happened to her son. "When I contacted
DFAT they wanted to know when we were travelling, details of our flights, where
we would be staying, our telephone numbers, et cetera, and I assumed, naively I
suppose, that representatives from the Australian Consulate in Bali would be
there to assist us. But there was no-one at the airport and, after that, it was
only when we went to the Australian Consulate that we were given some standard
advice."
Christine and her daughter were left to negotiate their way
through the maze of Indonesian bureaucracy and police interviews by themselves.
Christine recalls a particularly harrowing three-hour interview in a South Kuta
police station. "We had no translator, so a friend of Mark's came along to
help us. We sat in this tiny, dirty room with three policemen who would ask us
questions, which our friend would translate, then we'd answer, then he'd
translate again. In between, they would just break off to have a smoke, or
start talking together, or laugh, and I wanted to scream. They wanted me to
sign a statement and I said, 'I can't even read it'."
Since that day, Mark's family has continued to search for
answers. The autopsy revealed just how badly Mark had been beaten before he
died. Police now believe he was asphyxiated, the report said, with "some
sort of blunt object against his neck" before being dumped at the site
where his body was found. His scooter was allegedly then placed beside him, to
make his death look like an accident.
Christine says her son, who attended Nambour High School,
had earned tickets in forklift driving, rigging and heavy machinery operation,
and was planning to move to Western Australia to find work in the mining
industry. "Mark was a free spirit, a traveller and a surfer. He wasn't a
conventional man, in that he didn't always work a nine-to-five job, but he was
a wonderful son and brother and he did not deserve to die the way he did, in
such a violent way, and so far from home."
She believes she knows what could have happened to Mark, and
that someone within the Balinese police does also - that he inadvertently found
himself in a situation that got "way out of hand". "I think the
reason my son died was that he was trying to help somebody, because that was my
son - he was a helper."
JUST over six months after Mark Ovenden's death, another
young Queenslander's life was lost in Bali. Denni North, 33, was found barely
conscious beside the pool at her villa in Canggu, a small, coastal village
about 10km north of Kuta, on December 30 last year. She was taken to the Bali
International Medical Centre in Kuta, but was pronounced dead shortly
thereafter.
Originally from Deception Bay, north of Brisbane, Denni had
travelled the world for four years before making her home in Bali, and working
as a public relations consultant at the luxurious Cocoon Beach Club and resort
in Seminyak, just north of Kuta. Local police originally said Denni had drowned
in the early hours of that morning, but later withdrew that claim, while a
toxicology report undertaken in Bali found no detectable drugs in her system.
Her body was flown to Brisbane in January and an autopsy undertaken, with the
results not made public.
When Qweekend contacted Denni North's mother, Wendy, she
declined to be interviewed but said she remained "absolutely
devastated" by the death of her daughter.
These two Queenslanders are part of a growing list of people
who have met mysterious or violent ends in Bali, a list that includes Sydney fashion
designer Heidi Murphy, 34, stabbed to death in a robbery at her Canggu villa in
2008.
Then there are those who fall victim to the island's bootleg
alcohol industry. A high import tax for liquor of up to 200 per cent has
spawned a market for cheap, locally distilled alcohol, such as fermented rice
wine, or a particularly dicey brew known as arak, which can contain methanol if
distilled incorrectly or lackadaisically. Just 10ml of methanol can cause
blindness, and any more than 100ml almost always proves deadly. In 2009, 25
people died during a two-week period in Bali and nearby Lombok of arak methanol
poisoning, four of those international visitors.
In September 2011, 29-year-old Perth man Michael Denton died
after drinking a methanol-laced cocktail at a hotel in Kuta, and in January
this year, 19-year-old Liam Davies, visiting Gili Trawangan Island off Lombok,
died after unknowingly drinking a methanol-laced "vodka and lime" at
a well-known bar. Liam's death was horrific, the Perth roofing carpenter taking
care only to drink branded vodka at the popular Rudy's Pub, even warning his
friends to "be careful". Just a few hours later, the young man was in
serious trouble. After a medevac to Perth the next day, his parents made the
traumatic decision to turn off his life support, a frantic team of doctors
unable to save him from the poison shutting down his organs.
As for a growing number of young travellers, one of the
reasons Liam was in Bali was to join in the end-of-year celebrations known as
"Schoolies".
SKY Garden, The Bounty, Paddy's, Embargo are all well-known
clubs along Kuta Beach's nightlife strip, where last year 6000 young
Australians partied for their week-long Schoolies celebrations. Increasing
numbers of school leavers are eschewing the traditional Gold Coast annual
end-of-year event for the delights of Bali's party scene. So many revellers are
expected this year that Red Frogs, the not-for-profit organisation dedicated to
supporting school leavers through their annual blowout, is sending a record
number of staff to the island. Already on the ground is Paul Mergard, 38, the
Red Frogs Bali Coordinator, a position created last year.
"[Last year] was our first year in Bali, we had 18
people here; this year we are looking at about 40," Mergard tells Qweekend
from Kuta, where he is setting up a schoolies network between hotel managers,
bar staff, emergency services, medical personnel, the consulate and police for
this year's event. "It's needed because something seems to happen to some
young people in that six, seven-hour plane trip from Australia, where they
suddenly think it's okay to behave in ways they never would contemplate at
home. They can lose their common sense, their ability to judge situations and
their manners. The thing I saw mostly causing trouble last year was a lack of
respect for locals and their customs, speaking to them rudely or treating their
possessions with disrespect. It's a recipe for trouble, and you don't want to
get in trouble here."
Mergard also cautions against cheap drinks. "Stay away
from the bars that serve dollar drinks. If a drink seems too cheap, too good to
be true,
it probably is, so don't touch it with a ten-foot
bargepole," he cautions. "Methanol poisoning is a very real risk.
Last year we found a boy just wandering the streets with what he said felt like
pins and needles in his eyes. He'd lost his mates, he was in real trouble. We
threw him on a motorbike and got him to hospital where methanol poisoning was
instantly detected. His mother was later told if we hadn't found him, he would
be blind, or dead."
Mergard says a catch-22 situation exists on the island -
rules and regulations do appear to be more lax, but if you break them, the
consequences are far more serious. "Take out travel insurance, stay with
your mates at all times, don't drink cheap drinks and treat the locals with
respect," he says. "Of course, don't take drugs. Maybe even get out
of Kuta and see some of the island, and you should have a great time."
One schoolies event company has attempted to circumvent the
problems of partying in Bali by not offering it as a destination this year.
Popular schoolies website schoolies.com is instead planning a
"schoolies-only zone" for the 2014 end-of-year celebrations, booking
out an entire resort in Nusa Dua. The company plans to take over the Club Med
resort, offering round-the-clock day and night activities, and staffing it with
their own personnel and security teams.
Schoolies.com CEO Matt Lloyds says the move is an effort to
"make schoolies safer in Bali". "My personal opinion is that it
is not as safe as the Gold Coast," Lloyds says. "There just aren't as
many safeguards in place; not so many volunteers, police, ambulance, fire
crews, not as many checks on underage drinking. You can ride a scooter without
a helmet, the room for error or an accident happening is larger, and if it
does, it can be much trickier to help someone out."
The Gold Coast event, with alcohol-free parties, organised
activities and chill-out zones all policed by various officials, has become so
controlled that one reveller last year wryly noted, "We may as well still
be in school". Bali is seen as the polar opposite, an "anything
goes" party where underage drinking is common, drugs are - despite
Indonesia's strict anti-drug laws - easily obtained, and food and drink are
cheap and plentiful.
There's also a widely-held perception among many Australians
- not just the younger generation - that DFAT will be able to help those who
find themselves in hot water. In reality the department has limited powers, as
Christine Ovenden and others like her have sadly discovered.
WHEN Qweekend contacted DFAT regarding the death of
Mark Ovenden, it provided a written response: "At the outset, the
Department offers its condolences to Mrs Ovenden, and to Mark's sister, on
Mark's death … However, Australian consular officials do not have the
jurisdiction to intervene in proceedings, conduct investigations directly or
intervene in legal matters in foreign countries. We do encourage local
authorities to resolve cases as quickly and transparently as possible. [DFAT]
consular staff in Australia and in Bali continue to provide assistance to the
Ovenden family."
Reading it, Christine Ovenden shakes her head. "I don't
think I'll ever find out what happened to Mark," she says. DFAT has told
her it really can't do much more. The Indonesian police say the Mark Ovenden
case remains open, but there have been no leads. "I suppose I feel like I
have failed Mark in some way by not finding out what happened to him, or who
did this terrible thing to him," Christine says.
While she says she will never get over losing her son,
Christine finds some solace in visiting the places he was happy, such as Cotton
Tree near Maroochydore on the Sunshine Coast, where the friends of the surfer
all chipped in to buy a memorial plaque for a table at a park, and where their
mate loved to sit and contemplate the river.
She also likes to walk the beach at Alexandra Headland,
where in July last year, 150 surfers from around "Alex" and
Maroochydore did a "paddle-out" in Mark's honour, watched by 200 more
of his family and friends on the beach.
Christine and her daughter and son-in-law were in the water
too, scattering Mark's ashes and joining the circle of surfers, hooting,
hollering and splashing for their mate. She always feels closer to her son by
the ocean, watching the surfers run in from the waves, boards tucked under
their arms, some of them trotting over to pay their respects to Mark Ovenden's
mother. Many of them still surf Bali's famous breaks, and they do so with her
blessing.
"I still think it's a beautiful island, full of
beautiful people," she smiles, "but I want to tell people, especially
I suppose the young ones, to take care of yourselves and each other there. Mark
used to call me his angel - and now he's mine." Brisbane, The Courier Mail
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