It was October 12, 2002 and the call was grave. Explosions had ripped through Bali, the then-Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Keelty told his director of investigations. Come into the office straight away, Keelty ordered.

“It soon became clear a catastrophe of enormous scale had occurred,” Morris recalled this week.

“I’d visited Bali recreationally and professionally a number of times and I knew as a rule of thumb probably half the casualties would be Australian.”

His estimation wasn’t far off the mark. Of the 202 people killed in two terrorist bomb blasts in the popular tourist district of Kuta, 88 were Australian.

Click the image above to read and add tributes to bombing victims. 

To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Bali bombings on October 12, 2012, we have launched a memorial to honour and remember all 202 people who died in the terrorist attack. Behind each photo and image is the story of those who perished, and a place for people to leave their own personal tributes. 

Morris was quickly tasked with leading the biggest murder investigation in Australian history.

The discovery of human remains on the roof of the shattered Paddy’s Bar - a grim, tell-tale sign of a suicide bombing - was the first major breakthrough. A series of equally significant ones soon followed.

“But the investigation wasn’t over in eight weeks, this was a long, hard slog because once the perpetrators were arrested we had to make sure we had the best possible evidence to level against them and that evidence was scattered across Australia, overseas, around Indonesia,”  said Morris, who is now the AFP’s deputy commissioner.

“Usually you don’t get a second chance in these things to process a crime scene or capture the evidence so there’s a huge weight on your shoulders to get it right and get it right first time.

“But there was no standard operating procedure for 99 per cent of this so we had to improvise and do the best we could under the circumstances we were given.”

The AFP’s widely praised investigation was a watershed moment for an organisation traditionally focused on money laundering and international drug syndicates. Its role in Bali featured on an episode of the television show AFP.

The organisation had just two officers permanently stationed in Indonesia prior to the attack. Keelty this week revealed the depth of knowledge and understanding by the intelligence community about the group behind the attack – Jemaah Islamiyah, would have “fitted on an A4 piece of paper”.

Today, there are several dozen AFP officers in Indonesia and closer cooperation with Indonesian authorities.

Still, Morris regards the risk of further attacks as very real.

“I don’t know if people should necessarily be living in fear of terrorism but they need to be cognisant it can still happen and that there are still people out there that have intent to do some harm,” he said.

“But I would judge our capacity to deal with them as better than what it was a decade ago, there’s no doubt about that.”

Morris will join thousands of others for a service in Bali on Friday to mark the 10th anniversary of the bombings.

One hundred and eleven Australians have been killed in terrorist acts since 2001.