Shortcut: Forgotten Bombs: The Other Bali Bombings

January 5, 2026·18 min·1 clip

Joe Frost was face down in sand after a bomb exploded at his Bali dinner table, thinking his legs were on fire.

Australian True Crime host speaks with Joe Frost, who at age 20 had organized what began as a straightforward group holiday for a group of 16 and 17-year-old friends from Newcastle, a trip that expanded when their parents decided to join rather than let the teenagers go alone. By the time the group departed it numbered over 40 people ranging from children as young as 10 through to young adults, an unusually large family-and-friends group that traveled together to Bali. On Saturday October 1 2005, a significant portion of the group went to Jimbaran Bay to have dinner on the beach, a popular tourist experience. That evening, three bombs were detonated at Jimbaran Bay, killing and injuring diners and beachgoers. Frost and his group were on the beach when the explosions occurred. Frost describes the experience of having organized the trip, the responsibility he felt, and the specific chaos of the moments after the bombings. He notes that he has since produced a podcast called Forgotten Bombs: Bali 2005 that tells the full story of that night from the perspectives of the various members of the group, including versions from both the teenagers and their parents that he describes as slightly different. The 2005 Bali bombings, also attributed to the jihadist group Jemaah Islamiyah, killed 20 people and injured over 100, but have been largely overshadowed in Australian cultural memory by the 2002 bombings, which killed 202 people including 88 Australians. Frost says this relative forgetting was part of his motivation for producing the podcast. The Australian True Crime episode includes a warning for graphic descriptions of violence. The audience is anyone interested in the Bali bombings, Australian counter-terrorism history, or personal testimony from survivors of mass casualty events.

As heard by us

A compact, survivor-led entry point into the 2005 Bali bombings and Joe Frost's deeper investigation.

Australian True Crime revisits the 2005 Bali bombings through Joe Frost, one of the Newcastle teenagers who helped organise a group trip that grew into a larger family holiday.

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