On the evening of 12 October 2002, just two days before his official departure from Jakarta, his bags packed and his thoughts turning to the challenges of his new job in Canberra, the Australian Ambassador to Indonesia, Richard Smith, was relaxing at a farewell party hosted by his New Zealand counterpart. Soon after 11 p.m., local time, he received a call on his mobile telephone from the Australian Consul-General in Bali, Ross Tysoe. Tysoe reported that he had just heard a large explosion near the tourist area of Kuta and was now making his way there. Another guest at the party, the Australian Defence Attaché, Brigadier Ken Brownrigg, had received a similar call a few minutes earlier from Captain Jon Steinbeck, another member of the embassy's defence staff, who was holidaying in Bali.

For the next half hour or so, Smith and Brownrigg received regular telephone reports as Tysoe and Steinbeck made their separate ways towards the scene of the devastation. As often happens in the early stage of any crisis, the news was fragmentary and uncertain. Was this a bomb attack? A gas explosion? What was the target? How many people had been injured? How many were Australians?

The Australian intelligence organisations had for some time been directing government attention to the dangers of radical terrorist groups in Southeast Asia. The general security-threat levels for Australians in Indonesia were rated as high, but no specific warning of any action had been received. Indeed, the Deputy Head of the embassy, Neil Mules, was spending the weekend in Bali after attending a conference there.