Photography by: Phillip Castleton
The sky was blue, people lay on sunloungers and 16-year old Paul Giardina was at his absolute happiest playing ball in the pool with his dad Joe.
“Paul loved holidays and that first day in Phuket was unfolding exactly as we had expected,” Joe, now 67, tells Woman’s Day.
Paul had Down Syndrome and people knew him as the “Love Machine” because of his affectionate nature. He had travelled from Melbourne with his parents, Joe and Evanna, to the Thai resort town at the end of 2004.
“On 26 December, we came down for breakfast and got a table on the beachfront,” Joe remembers. “We thought we were lucky. It was a perfect day, but we started to notice the water was swirling and browning off. However, it didn’t look dangerous.”
Suddenly, there was a shout and the main boat pier floated away. All the while, water was edging up the beach and onto the road.
“I didn’t anticipate this thing to develop into a wall of water,” Joe says. But realising they were going to get wet feet, he grabbed Paul and they ran inside. Evanna was separated from them and then everything happened in seconds.
“The water was still coming, but it wasn’t that high,” tells Joe. “I put Paul against a pillar and held on to him.”
But the power of the water, travelling at an unbelievable 800km/h, picked them up and threw them over a wall. More waves ploughed through the area, throwing everything into watery chaos, and when debris hit Joe on the head, he let go of his precious son.
He says now, “I look back and think, ‘Could I have done anything differently?’ I feel responsible for what happened, but I have to be realistic too – it was not in my control.”
As what’s now known as the Boxing Day Tsunami wreaked havoc on Southeast Asia, killing around 230,000 people, Joe blacked out and was tossed to where he was later found in a stairwell.
“Initially, no one took me to hospital because they didn’t think I’d make it,” tells Joe. He had broken ribs, a punctured lung and another full of sand, plus a badly injured hand.
“I felt no pain,” Joe recalls. “My only pain was wondering where Paul and Evanna were.”
Joe was reunited with Evanna later that day, but Paul was nowhere to be found.
His brothers, Peter and Angelo, who’d flown into Thailand to help, found Paul’s body in a morgue three days later.
“Grieving at any time is terrible, but under those circumstances, it was an absolute nightmare,” says Joe.
Back home, processing the enormity of the Boxing Day Tsunami event began.
“You learn to live with the pain,” shares Joe. “There was a big void.”
Joe and Evanna opened a shoe shop “to keep us distracted”, and Joe was himself instrumental in the building of the Indian Ocean Tsunami Memorial in Canberra in 2015, which names the 26 Australians who lost their lives.
But it was travelling back to Phuket 10 months later that was most important to his and Evanna’s healing journey.
“It meant the wave didn’t win,” explains Joe. “It was very quiet. We walked along the beach as sunglasses from that day continued to wash ashore.
“We felt for the Thai people because they’d lost everything. It was comforting too as we felt Paul’s spirit there.”
During this trip, Joe swam alone in the pool when a beach ball, the kind Paul loved, gently hit him on the head.
“I couldn’t tell where it came from,” tells Joe. “Then I went and sat at a table, and suddenly the ball was next to me again. I had no idea how it got there.”
Other inexplicable “Paul things” have happened over the 20 years since his death and the family also keeps his memory alive with photos everywhere. His bedroom remains untouched.
“Paul used to say, ‘Hi, bird,’ when he saw a bird, and Evanna and I still do that today,” Joe smiles. “In his 16 years, he left such a lasting impression with us. He was a very special boy.”
This week marks 20 years since the Boxing Day tsunami, and Joe and Evanna will be acknowledging the anniversary with a trip to the Canberra memorial.
“What happened to us has given us a deeper appreciation of life,” admits Joe. “You have to appreciate your loved ones because once they’re gone, they’re gone.”
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