A jihadist from Jemaah Islamiyah had detonated a one-tonne suicide bomb, which was intended to strike at the heart of Australia in retaliation for its involvement in the Iraq war and its help in busting Indonesian terror networks.

The masterminds, Noordin Top and master bombmaker Azahari bin Husin, both since killed in police raids, were also behind the first Bali bomb two years earlier thatkilled 202, including 88 Australians.

But the embassy bomb did much more damage to neighbouring office buildings than to the mission itself, and all nine who died were Indonesians – including four policemen and a security guard, the embassy gardener, a visa applicant and a pedestrian.

Indonesia expert Greg Fealy said the bomb would have done more damage if the bomber, Heri Golun, had known how to use a clutch. Security video from across the road shows his Daihatsu van bunny-hopping along the road before blowing up too soon. He had been taught to drive by another member of the plot, Rois, only two weeks earlier.

Nevertheless, for those caught in the blast, the experience was terrifying.

Sudirman Thalib was 22 and guarding the embassy gate. It was 10.30am when the bomb shattered the morning.

"I was badly injured but I was still conscious," Sudirman says now. "I saw big smoke and I thought it must be a bomb. I saw people falling down – one fell down next to me. He was dead. Many died, a few were still alive."

Sudirman spent three months in and out of hospitals.

When he had recovered sufficiently, he went back to work at the embassy and, a decade later, still does, even though he takes five different medications for the nerve damage to his hands.

"My left hand is the worst. I can use it only 50 to 60 per cent, and the right hand only 70 per cent," he says.

He is grateful that Australia pays for everything, looking after "more than I need".

Dr Fealy said that, for the embassy, the consequence was a "dramatic escalation" of security that had made the current Jakarta building into a concrete-ringed fortress.

A new building to house the mission is currently under construction and due to open in 2016. In response to the bombing and to comply with Australian health and safety laws, it will be even more impenetrable.

"I think that it's regrettable that we'll soon have an embassy with all the most senior officers living on that compound," Dr Fealy said.

"It will make them even more distant from the local community and more existing in their own bubble."

The Australian embassy bomb was one of a cluster of terror attacks against western interests in Indonesia in the pastdecade — the 2002 and 2005 Bali bombings, the 2003 bombing of the Marriott hotel in Jakarta and the 2009 attack against the Marriott (again) and Ritz Carlton hotels.

Since then, the Jemaah Islamiyah network has been weakened by judicial and extra-judicial executions, internal splits and the imprisonment of spiritual leader, Abu Bakar Bashir.

Bashir has since thrown his lot in with the Islamic State group, also known as ISIL or ISIS.