As a forensic investigator, Peter Baines dealt with death on a daily basis, but he will never forget what confronted him when he first arrived in Thailand to help identify victims of the Boxing Day tsunami.
“I stepped into a temple at a place called Wat Yan Yao where there were 3,500 decomposing bodies on the ground,” he said.
“I’d always been involved in the investigation of death, but arriving at Wat Yan Yao was a confrontation to all your senses.”
On December 26, 2004, a 9.1-magnitude earthquake occurred in the Indian Ocean off the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
It triggered a series of powerful waves that would kill more than 220,000 people across 14 countries.
Scenes of devastation at Khao Lak in the wake of the tsunami. (Reuters: Luis Enrique Ascui)
On the NSW South Coast, Peter Baines was holidaying with his family when he received the call that would change his life.
At the time, Peter was a forensic crime scene investigator for NSW Police, and had been involved in identifying bodies following the Bali bombings in 2002.Â
Peter, left, when he was initially called out to Thailand in 2004. (Supplied: Hands Across the Water)
But nothing could prepare him for the destruction he saw on the west coast of Thailand, where sites like the small village of Khao Lak were hit by waves up to 10 metres tall.Â
Here, with an international team, he would ultimately recover 5,395 bodies in the world’s largest disaster victim identification attempt.Â
Relief workers with covered bodies packed in dry ice in Thailand after the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004. About 230,000 people were killed across 13 countries across southern Asia in the disaster. Some Queensland police officers in the Disaster Victim Identification Unite were sent to Thailand to help. (Qld Police Service – file photo)
Over the next year, Peter would spend every second month in Thailand, carefully working to identify victims.
Every time Peter and other investigators would leave Thailand, the Thai workers in his hotel would gather at reception to wish them well.Â
“The genuine nature of their feelings, they would cry in deep appreciation,” he said.Â
A lasting connection
It was on one of his last rotations in Thailand that Peter began thinking about the future for the Thai people impacted, like the children who had been left without parents following the disaster.
“In the aftermath of crisis and disaster, lots of people turn up … governments, NGOs, charities, corporates … but too many will leave too quickly,” he said.
The Baan Tharn Namchai house, the initial Thai orphanage opened by Hands Across the Water. (Supplied: Hands Across the Water)
In 2005, Peter founded Hands Across the Water, a charity to provide ongoing support to the affected children.Â
What began as a single house has expanded to seven houses across Thailand, with Peter raising more than $30 million.
Watahana “Game” Sittirachot, who was a student living at a Hands Across the Water house, remembers being a boy when he first met Peter.Â
“He brought more than 100 bicycles to give to all the children the first time I met him,” he said.
Peter and Watahana “Game” Sittirachot celebrating Game’s completion of a law degree. (Supplied: Hands Across the Water)
Through the support of the charity, Game was able to study and is currently the director of the house he grew up in.
“Now I’m working here, he makes sure I’m comfortable with work and everything,” Game said.Â
“I think of him as like my father.”
A run to remember
In the lead-up to the 20th anniversary of the tsunami, Peter knew he wanted to do something big to mark the occasion.Â
“When I talk to people, they go, ‘Wow, is it 20 years already?'” he said.
“The passage of time has flown past and I can still feel and see what it was like boarding the plane to go to Thailand.”
The idea to run nearly the entire length of Thailand first came to him in September 2022 and after training for 15 months, Peter set off on December 1 from the Baan Home Hug orphanage in Yasothon in the north-east of Thailand.
After running an average of 60km per day in 30-plus degree heat and high humidity, he’ll end his run today at the tsunami memorial in Ban Nam Khem.Â
After a long day running, Peter sits with a Buddhist monk. (Supplied: Hands Across the Water)
Two kilometres from the finish line is Wat Yan Yao, the temple where Peter spent months identifying thousands of tsunami victims.Â
That final stretch will be the hardest part of the run.Â
“I know the emotion will build. I know I’ll want to go slower because I won’t want it to finish,” he said.
“Each one of those bodies was someone’s family.Â
“We will never replace the families that were lost, but I know we’ve made an improvement to the lives [of survivors].”