She was behind the bar of the Newcastle Worker’s Club, cleaning up a spilled cup of tea, when a 5.6 magnitude earthquake sent debris flying.
“All of a sudden there was this massive explosion,” she recalls. “I’ve turned around, I looked up and I said, ‘Oh my god, what the hell’s happening?’
“The roof was coming down, you could see the back wall coming, and there was just dust.”
The impact of the earthquake was enough to rattle windows more than a hundred kilometres away. Thirteen people were killed in the devastation. Nine of them were inside the Newcastle Worker’s Club at the time.
Some of those were Kerry Ingram’s friends, including trades assistant Barry Sparkes.
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“I blame myself for Barry Sparkes’ death,” she says.
“Barry came up for morning tea. It was his turn for the $5 lottery ticket, and he went to go back down [to the basement].
“I said don’t worry about it, give it to me later.”
Barry left and Kerry never saw him again.
In the aftermath, Kerry remembers administering first aid to the injured once they’d escaped the rubble of the club. Among them was her co-worker, Elaine Stamford.
“I just grabbed her and squeezed her ear to stop it bleeding,” says Kerry.
Both women attended a special church service on Sunday to commemorate the tragedy.
Kerry says these moments are part of an ongoing healing process - a process which continues even today, 25 years after the event.
“To this day, I really don’t know how we got out of there, because if you saw inside the club, oh my god,” she says.
