Amid death and destruction after the Boxing Day tsunami, remarkable things happened

Every hour, the death toll seemed to double. It was to do so for the next few days and reached 270,000 dead from more than 14 nations. I had left the MCG at lunch break and was soon on a flight to Colombo, Sri Lanka, where news of terrible losses had first been reported.

The airport was sheer chaos when I landed. The city of Colombo was untouched but in shock. We made our way down to Galle along the coast, although the trip that should have taken three hours took 13. Many citizens were fleeing by the same road, which caused a nightmare of congestion for the big aid relief trucks.

I will never forget the sight of the derailed train known as the Queen of the Sea. More than 1000 passengers were just wiped out – proof of the wave’s terrible force. Then there were the crowds, staring out to sea in an eerie silence, looking for loved ones.

Just outside the cricket ground at Galle, where Shane Warne famously took his 500th wicket, there were already mass graves – mainly for women and children who were unable to run as fast or hang on to a tree like the men.

The stench of death was overpowering. So many unknown people, unclaimed in death, who had to be buried quickly to prevent a cholera outbreak. It was heartbreaking.

After a week in Sri Lanka, I flew home to co-ordinate an appeal from Australians. At that point, Banda Aceh had the highest death toll, but amid the pro-independence Free Aceh movement, the Indonesian government kept the world from hearing that for some time. Once the news broke, I jumped on a plane there to find that the destruction was even greater, even reshaping the coastline.

But amid apocalyptic death and destruction, two remarkable things happened.

The first was the response of the Howard government, which granted $1 billion of aid to Indonesia. Australia’s relationship to our nearest neighbour was forever changed. The goodwill that flowed from its new president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono reset our diplomatic relationship after the tensions over Australia’s role in East Timor’s independence.

The second thing was the generosity of Australians. All three commercial television networks did something unprecedented: they broadcast the Opera House aid concert on each channel and encouraged donations over the next three hours of Saturday night prime-time. An international cricket game followed, in which Australia played the rest of the world. Something that would normally take 12 months to organise came together in a week. I was honoured to address the crowd and receive, on World Vision’s behalf, a cheque for more than $12 million in aid.

I had witnessed a wave of terrible destruction, I said, but it had now been met with a wave of generosity and compassion.

Two decades on, I reflect on lessons learnt. As a largely coastal people, Australians understood that this could’ve happened to us. Australians died, particularly in Thailand, which gave sharp focus to our shock and grief. I did notice that six months later, when an earthquake in Pakistan killed 160,000 people, it was difficult to raise Australian dollars. There was no local angle with Australian faces to tell the story of grief and loss. This is the ethics of proximity where those closest to us tug on our hearts and those further away have little claim.

Second, I was often asked where God was in this almighty tragedy? How could I still believe that he was good if he had not stopped this natural disaster? Or was he good, but not all-powerful? I do not have good answers to those questions. But of course context determines how we pose and answer these questions. The people smashed by the tsunami often said that without faith, they had no energy to rebuild their lives. Faith gave them hope when they had lost loved ones and everything else. And I was there too, because of my faith in a God of hope.