Australia’s Ganja Queen returns home
Print Edition
AUSTRALIAN Schapelle Corby battled a media storm as she returned home from Bali 12 years after her conviction for drug trafficking, in a dramatic end to a saga that captivated her homeland.
The beauty school dropout hit Australian headlines when she was arrested in 2004 at Bali airport aged 27 with several kilos of hashish stashed in her surfing gear, and was jailed the following year for 20 years.
Her sentence was cut, after nine years behind bars, due to regular remissions and after an appeal to the president. She was released early in 2014 but was required to remain on Bali for three years under parole.
Corby and her sister Mercedes concocted an elaborate plan to avoid the cameras after they touched down in the eastern city of Brisbane yesterday, using multiple vehicle convoys to confuse the media when they departed the airport.
A member of her security team read out a family statement at the airport, where they expressed their “gratefulness and relief that this morning we mark Schapelle Corby’s return to Australia.”
“We would like to say thank you to Schapelle’s supporters for all the faith, love and support they have shown over the years... Priority of focus will now be on healing and moving forward.”
Media scramble
Corby, 39, has maintained her innocence, insisting the drugs had been planted, and received much support back home where some believed she had been set up or was the victim of a supposedly corrupt justice system.
Her final day on the Indonesian resort island was a blaze of media attention, as she was hustled out of a villa with her face hidden under a scarf and chased by journalists before boarding a flight home.
She managed to outsmart the media by heading back to Brisbane on a different flight than had been widely expected, apparently to avoid travelling with a large contingent of reporters.
Shortly after landing in Australia, live television broadcasts followed one of the vehicle convoys believed to be carrying Corby and Mercedes.
It was not clear where Corby was headed, with media camped out outside her mother Rosleigh Rose’s home in Loganlea, south of Brisbane.
In bizarre scenes, her sister, other family members and friends, two wearing ghoulish masks, gathered at the house, while further south at Mercedes’ home on the Gold Coast, reporters waiting outside said a Corby-lookalike had turned up.
The family were also waiting for Corby to return home so she could help scatter her father’s ashes at a secret location after his death nine years ago from cancer.
Unlike in Australia, Indonesia’s press dubbed Corby “The Ganja Queen” and she received little sympathy from the public, who largely support the country’s tough anti-drugs laws.
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