A YOUNG woman from Dignams Creek was forced to hide in a basement bar during the recent attacks in Paris that killed 129 people.

Eloise van Stekelenburg, who finished Year 12 at the Sapphire Coast Anglican College last year, is currently in Paris working as an au pair for a local family where she helps to look after three girls between seven and 12. 

The 18-year-old said when the attacks took place on the night of November 13 she was at a bar with seven other au pair friends.

As the bar was in a basement, none of them had any phone service so were oblivious to the events taking place in the city. 

About 10.30pm, one of her friends went upstairs to smoke and saw everything that was happening on her phone, so came back to tell the group.

“We were obviously all very shocked and terrified as we were close to Hôtel de Ville at the center of the city and weren't sure where the attacks were yet,” Ms van Stekelenburg said. 

“The bar staff and everybody told us that the safest thing to do was to just stay put, so we did.” 

She said being stuck in the bar not knowing what was happening was horrible. 

“I was a bit of a mess, nothing has ever happened to me like that before: trying to watch the news in French and not understanding it all, being stuck in the middle of a foreign city with nowhere to go - it was definitely terrifying,” she said.  

“Every siren made me jump.

“I just wanted to go home to my family in Australia - it had never felt so far away than that night.” 

Rumours - which were disproven the next day - came through that there were attacks at Châtelet Les Halles and the Centre Pompidou, which was very close to the bar.

At midnight, Ms van Stekelenburg’s host family called and told her to book a taxi home, but none of the taxi sites worked and said the best thing to do was to stay where she was. 

“I considered walking home, it would have taken me about 45 minutes, but looking back now I realise having done that I would have walked exactly through where the attacks happened at the café Le Petit Cambodge in the 10th arrondissement,” she said. 

“So [the father of] my absolutely gorgeous host family drove around the long way to pick up myself and seven of my friends, which was risky for him.

“We got home safely at about 2am and they had already set up beds in the lounge room for my friends.”  

SPEAKING on Tuesday, several days after the attacks on Paris, Eloise van Stekelenburg said there was a lively feel in the city.

“I think at the moment people keep carrying on almost to stand up to the terrorists,” she said. 

“Even the 10-year-old that I look after came home from school with a drawing saying ‘we still live free’ - in French, obviously. 

“Paris has a very supportive feel at the moment. 

“It's a shame something so awful had to happen to make it so.” 

One method the French are using to show they are not afraid is called Tout Au Bistro, which means “all to bistros” and involves people supporting Paris by eating out and sitting on the terraces.  

While some French that Ms van Stekelenburg has spoken to support their government’s increased bombing of ISIS targets in Syria and some do not, she personally believes it is the wrong course of action.

“I feel like it's just going to antagonise it [ISIS] further and give them further reasons to hate France,” she said. 

“They want us to hate and fight among ourselves.”

Ms van Stekelenburg will be in Paris until July 2016 and said despite the attacks she has no intention of cutting her trip short.