Lake Macquarie woman Leah Lee tells of being in Paddy's Bar at Kuta when the bombs went off in Bali in 2002

The Lake Macquarie woman was sitting in Paddy's Bar at Kuta on the infamous night in 2002 when the first of two bombs to strike Bali's bustling tourist district exploded below her.

"I remember being blown off my feet," Ms Lee told the Newcastle Herald last week.

"I remember running on my knees. I remember trying to find an exit out of the building.

"We tried to go down the stairwell, however it was full of fire, bodies, people who were trapped - there was nowhere to go."

The high school PE teacher recently reflected on her experiences ahead of the 20th anniversary of the tragedy, today.

At her Eleebana home - which the single mother shares with her kids Zali, 10, and Kai, 8 - she has a plastic-page folder with notes and press clippings from the time, and some of the aftermath, of both the 2002 attack and the blast that again rocked the island in 2005.

Extraordinarily, Ms Lee is a survivor of both.

The 2002 act of terrorism killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, when bombs were set off at Paddy's and the Sari Club - two busy nighttime venues - at about 11pm on October 12.

Another bomb was detonated about the same time outside the US consulate office in Denpasar, a few kilometres away.

Hundreds of people were injured.

Claimed by extremist group Jemaah Islamiyah, it remains the deadliest act of terror against Australian citizens.

According to the National Museum of Australia, the victims came from more than 20 nations - Australia suffered the largest loss of life.

Two days after the attack, Prime Minister of the day John Howard described the bombings in an address to parliament as a "foul deed" and said the nation had a right to feel a "deep sense of anger".

"Nothing can excuse this behaviour," Mr Howard said at the time.

"No cause - however explained, however advocated, however twisted, however spun - can possibly justify the indiscriminate, unprovoked slaughter of innocent people. That is what has occurred here."

Australian and Indonesian authorities worked together to investigate the attack and more than 30 people were ultimately arrested.

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw on Tuesday described the bombings as an "incomprehensible act of evil".

"That unprovoked attack collectively shocked our nation, but it did not bring Australia to its knees like those terrorists had craved," he said.

"Instead, Australians stood strong together - and importantly, they stood next to the innocent people of Indonesia."

Ms Lee went to Bali for the first time in 2002 when her aunt and friends offered her a ticket after someone pulled out of their planned trip.

On the afternoon of October 12, a young Balinese man the group had befriended at the resort where they were staying asked Ms Lee to go to the Sari Club with him that evening to meet some of his mates - she accepted the invitation.

After a sketchy journey through backstreets, Ms Lee and the young man arrived on Jalan Legian - also known as Legian Road - the busy main drag that stretches from Kuta in the north to Seminyak in the south.

"Believe it or not, we got a park pretty much right out the front of Paddy's nightclub," she said.

"We went to go into the Sari Club, however it was too busy - there were too many people. So we walked across the road to Paddy's.

"There were probably heaps of people downstairs as well, so we decided we'd go upstairs.

"We sat down at the bar, ordered a drink and bang, pretty much straight away."

Ms Lee was blown off her seat at the bar when the first bomb exploded on the ground-floor level.

She got up and survival instinct kicked in as she heard the second blast come from the nearby Sari Club.

"I remember the second bomb going off extremely quickly after the first one, so I was just like 'what the hell was that?' panicking [that] more were going to happen," she said.

"In the end, we had to walk towards the front of the building where the bomb had gone off - the second bomb - and pretty much jump out of the building to get out."

Unsure what was happening, Ms Lee said she wondered whether she was dropping from the first floor into a scene of street fighting or something similar - the explosions made the place feel like a warzone, not a holiday oasis.

She suffered a knee and ankle injury. The young man she was with took her to his friend's house where there was water, her wounds were cleaned and she borrowed a motorbike to get back to her hotel.

"To this day, I do feel guilty for not staying and helping however ... my first thing was just like 'yeah I have to get out'," Ms Lee said.

"I didn't go back towards the site, however sometimes I kind of wish that I did. But I think I didn't [in order to] to protect myself."

When she arrived back at the hotel, she came across another young man - also a tourist - standing outside.

He told Ms Lee he was on his way to the Sari Club to meet his travel companions, unaware of what had unfolded.

Ms Lee said the people he was planning to meet were among the dead that night.

The days following the bombings were "eerie" and she spent them mostly at the hotel.

Ms Lee remembers seeing police and military personnel everywhere - men walking the streets and beaches armed with large machine guns.

She returned home and lived with the nightmares that came with experiencing such trauma.

In 2005, she travelled to Kuta with her mum and was about 50 metres from the middle of one of the two blasts that again rocked Bali, killing 20 people and injuring more than 100 others.

"Since being in the second bombs, it was like 'I've done this before, I've been there, I'm OK, everything's fine'," she said.

"The nightmares really stopped after that, which is weird because I had a lot of nightmares until that one."

Ms Lee has been back to Bali several times since 2005.

She, Zali and Kai are going there for a holiday next month.

Ms Lee said it was a coincidence that the trip was happening around the time of the 20 year anniversary of the 2002 bombings.

The federal government flew Ms Lee, other survivors and family members of those who died to Bali for the 10^th anniversary of the attack in 2012 to visit the memorial that now stands on the former Paddy's site.

The venue was rebuilt a short stroll down the street.

Ms Lee said she feels comfortable in Kuta, though her history with the city is always in the back of her mind. She doesn't like to walk along Legian Road at night.

Although she no longer has the nightmares, Ms Lee continues to deal with the effects of the bombings in her daily life.

"Any loud noises, I struggle with still," she said.

"I'm kind of always scoping what would happen if a bomb[ing] happened. Where can I get out? Where would I go? What would I do? That sort of thing.

"Particularly when I'm tired and stressed, I actually can hear the bomb in my head.

"I think it has made me a little bit more wary about what's going on. Even at school we do lockdowns and even that is a trigger for me.

"I just get up and keep going. I think I'm a resilient person."

IN THE NEWS:

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: