A DECADE ago, Carren Smith was celebrating in the Sari Club. It was the first night of a holiday with friends Jodi Wallace and Charmaine Whitton.
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Minutes later, Miss Smith, then 32, was on the floor among bodies, surrounded by fire.
"I remember dancing and talking, then I was on the floor," she said.
Miss Smith managed to make her way out of the devastation and onto the street, where she was taken to a medical centre.
"I had no idea I had been injured," she said. "I could feel something warm and gooey on my face."
Four hours passed before she was seen by an American doctor. She received 38 staples, without anaesthetic, into her head.
"The adrenaline is massive and the fight for life is superhuman," she said.
Miss Smith had a crushed skull and was transferred to a private hospital where she was told she needed a life-saving operation to stop her skull from pressing on her brain.
But she wanted to return to Australia as quickly as she could.
"The conditions weren't favourable in Bali from a hygiene perspective," she said.
"I had shared needles with six other people. No way was it safe to have an operation there."
Defying doctors, she boarded a flight to Sydney less than 24 hours after the bombs went off. Back in Australia, doctors removed bone fragments from her head and inserted a plate.
But the worst wasn't over. Two days later she was told Jodi and Charmaine weren't coming home.
"It was devastating. I was broken for a good six years," she said.
She said there were still days she couldn't believe her friends were no longer here.
After a long, painful battle with depression, Miss Smith decided she wanted to share her story with others and became a motivational speaker. "I couldn't keep blaming the Bali bombings for the way my life was going anymore," she said.
"I was convinced that helping people in this way was the right thing to do.
"I feel incredibly positive and blessed to be here and to tell people my story."
Three weeks ago, Miss Smith travelled to Bali for the first time since the tragedy for an interview with Channel Nine's Sixty Minutes. "Vivid memories of that night flooded back to me," she said.
She lives in Mooloolaba, Queensland, with partner Matt and despite the positives admits: "I'm not the same person I was back then".
Miss Smith has written a book about her ordeal, Soul Survivor.
