Hundreds of daytrippers have toured the battered beachfront of Cilacap district, where some 142 were killed out of the at least 528 who lost their lives when the walls of water lashed Java's southern shores on Monday afternoon.

At Widarapayung beach, a "No Entry" sign erected to block traffic access to the road failed to deter a flow of visitors bent on getting a glimpse of the tangled tsunami aftermath.

They were here to see the desolate beach, littered with flotsam deposited by the retreating waves, a public swimming pool laid bare for all to see after its surrounding walls were flattened, and collapsed concrete parasols.

Fingers were pointed at the rubble and the sea as tales and speculation were exchanged. Soldiers in fatigues, some armed, sat and watched from the shade of coconut trees.

"What if our friends ask us about the tsunami?"

"We just want to see what it is like, after a tsunami," said Sri Susmiati, a shy teenager from Gombong, a town from 30 kilometres northeast, as her friends giggled around her and their boyfriends snapped shots of themselves in front of what were once the changing cabins.

Susniati, a ninth grader, said they had left the school on motorcycles to visit the scenes of the devastation.

Siti Mukhorirah (32) came from unaffected Cilacap town about 20 kilometres away, accompanied by a group of female neighbours on a minibus they rented for the occasion.

"What if our friends ask us about the tsunami?" the veiled Mukhorirah said, adding that relatives and friends from outside the district were bound to ask her about the disaster.

Oblivious to the stares of the soldiers, they chattered away, tossing pieces of orange skin to the ground as they snacked and commented on the scene.

Jasiran, a smiling elderly man in a neat shiny synthetic batik shirt, was not however there for sightseeing — he and a dozen relatives from a nearby village had come to see where his nephew was believed to have gone missing.

The nephew was with a group of nine others who had come to the area to gather a local shellfish for duckfeed. All were caught unaware by the walls of water, but only he failed to return home that day.

Jasiran's group had just come from a nearby disaster management centre to check on the list of the dead there. The boy's name was not among the 55 listed.

Tales of survival

A few kilometres west, tsunami tourists also gathered at a 300-metre stretch of wasteland at what had been a popular beach.

Their attention was caught by a survivor, who with a few stitches on his scalp and barely-dry wounds on his legs to prove what he'd endured, was busy recounting the moments he was swept away by the wave.

Tukimin (38) had also been gathering shellfish with dozens of other men when the tsunami arrived. The group lost four men, including two of his brothers.

He himself owed his life to a large, worn bamboo basket which he managed to grab and cling on to while submerged.

"I ran fast after I heard a loud bang and saw the first foaming white waves crash onshore, followed by a much taller dark wave that came very fast on us," he told the entranced crowd, lifting his shirt to display the cuts on his chest. The group nodded gravely.

On their way back from the beach, the visitors stop at Gunung Selok, the only hill for miles around, where thousands have been spending the night in the open air or under makeshift tents, fearful of another tsunami catching them in the dark of the night.

Their vehicles jostled for parking space with those of another kind of tsunami regular: relief workers from governmental, private and political groups.

AFP