In 2007, she was on board Garuda Indonesia Flight 200 when it crashed near Adisutjipto International Airport, sustaining injuries which resulted in the amputation of both her legs.
In 2000, she was hired by The Sydney Morning Herald as a reporter, and was posted to the paper's Canberra bureau where she became a correspondent and columnist covering foreign affairs and defence.
[2] In March 2007, Banham was sent to Jakarta, Indonesia by the Herald to cover an official visit by Alexander Downer, the Australian foreign affairs minister.
[2] Banham was a post-doctoral fellow, and currently a visiting scholar at the Regulatory Institutions Network (Regnet), part of the College of Asia and the Pacific at ANU.
[4] In addition to the publication of her doctoral thesis, Banham also authored a memoir, A Certain Light, which parallels her family history (in particular her maternal grandfather Alfredo, an Italian military internee during World War II) with her own experiences in surviving the Garuda crash.