By PAUL HEINRICHS
Her anxiety is palpable; her voice disturbing. Ethnic Chinese fear of Indonesian mob violence has found expression in Kew.

In a Barkers Road boarding house, this grandmother is reduced to a hoarse staccato whisper from panic caused by the anti-Chinese riots in Jakarta last month. She cannot sleep, and is traumatised by the prospect of having to return in a few months to the place where she might easily have been killed.

She has lost a half-million dollar hairdressing salon, burned out when an office building was torched by the mob, and only just escaped with her life.

Her son, 32, helped evacuate her at night across the rooftop of her West Jakarta home to a back lane as murderous mobs thronged outside the front, throwing rocks at the windows.

With her four-year-old grandson, and her son's wife and sister, they undertook the hazardous trip to the airport, and flew to Australia on temporary visas, arriving on 16 May.

Now, like several hundred other ethnic Chinese Indonesians, they say they are too traumatised to return to Jakarta yet, and are asking for special consideration to stay in Australia.

The woman's son is a travel agent and student consultant who has come and gone from Australia on business.

He had been back a fortnight in Jakarta on 13 May when students were shot at the university. He decided he had better stay inside.

That night, he saw smoke and heard explosions as a nearby petrol station was torched and, from his third floor, he got a good view of the action.

"I saw a lot of people waiting in front of our door. First there were 10 from one lane, then 10 came from another. I began to feel very bad, and my mother told me to evacuate the children first, so I went out and then I saw thousands of the rioters coming, shouting "kill the Chinese".

The terrified family huddled together that night. On 15 May, they found an ATM machine in the central city area, withdrawing money only minutes before the bank was set on fire.

The family paid an Indonesian man to drive them to the airport, a dangerous journey through still-burning car bodies and marauding rioters. They spent an anxious day before making it on to a Qantas flight on their pre-existing valid visas.

Since then, the man's wife and sister have returned to Jakarta, but are both keeping a return air ticket in their bags.