Holidaymakers Caught In Terrorist Gunfire
The Age
Friday November 28, 2008
Adventure holidays, wedding parties and work trips suddenly turned into a nightmare for Australians caught up in Mumbai, writes Farah Farouque.
IT WAS only intended as a modest adventure, a graduation celebration for two Australian university students that would be launched in India's famously fun gateway city. But an overseas jaunt turned into a life-threatening excursion when terrorist bullets shattered a Mumbai night.In the aftermath, Kate Anstee, 24, whose leg was hit by a terrorist bullet, has undergone emergency surgery. The force of the bullet broke her femur and went through the front of her thigh during her ordeal. She is likely to undergo further surgery.Her 23-year-old boyfriend, David Coker, also suffered a leg wound and was admitted to hospital. His father, John Coker, is a federal magistrate in Queensland.The couple, who had saved all year for their trip, had just begun their 10-week world holiday after completing law degrees at the Canberra campus of the Australian National University."They put their bags down in the hotel in Mumbai and went out to the Leopold coffee shop, which is apparently listed in Lonely Planet as a cool place to hang out, and they were just sitting there and a whole lot of guys, ... opened fire with machine-guns," Kate's father, Chris Anstee said in Sydney."Dave has been very quick-witted and level-headed ... grabbed Kate and picked her up."David Gross, the boyfriend of former Neighbours actress Brooke Satchwell, was among a group of Australians who hid in an upstairs room at the cafe for four hours until they fled as terrorist gunfire and grenade explosions grew closer."We started breaking the windows and ripped down curtains to make a rope ... people were sliding out ... it was a one-storey drop onto broken glass," Mr Gross said.He said that after fleeing the restaurant and hiding in another hotel, his group of nine did not know where to go because neither the Australian consulate in Mumbai nor the embassy in New Delhi were answering phones.Earlier, Satchwell, who was in Mumbai working on an American pay-TV program, had gone outside for a cigarette when the terrorists struck. She hid in a cupboard in a ground-floor lavatory for an hour before being escorted to safety by Taj Mahal hotel security staff to be reunited with Mr Gross. "There were six of us in the bathroom and everybody froze," Satchwell said, "then 45 minutes later some of the hotel officials came in and shepherded us out across the foyer."It was chaos and nobody knew what was going on. Next thing I knew I was running down the stairs and there were a couple of dead bodies across the stairs - and then I was out past the barricades and the crowd was starting to gather. I ran up the street and bumped into an American tourist."We stopped on the street for a little while, not knowing where to go, and it became very clear that being out (on the street) was not safe and that foreigners were a strong target so we went into another hotel."Garrick Harvison, of Sydney, an export manager for Yarraman Estate wines, was staying at the Oberoi Hotel, another prime target. He said he hid on the floor of his hotel room when the gunmen entered the hotel lobby."We started hearing all this banging, which we just thought were fireworks or something," he said. "When we looked over and found that it wasn't fireworks, it was actually people shooting people, I just ran inside my room."Melburnian Lisa McKenzie, who had checked into another hotel nearby at the tail-end of a four-week subcontinental holiday, said the the experience was "quite surreal".Adelaide woman Chloe Papazahariakis, who had recently moved to Mumbai, and will marry Bollywood star Puneet Vasistha next week , was also caught up in the mayhem with wedding guests. Some sought refuge in a city restaurant for nine hours."I've got about 20 friends here for the wedding in the midst of all this chaos," Ms Papazahariakis said. "We just can't believe it."The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that in the year to September more than 132,000 Australian visited India. Ten years ago, only about 39,000 Australians visited annually. -- With STAFF REPORTERS, AGENCIES
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