And as Schapelle Corby lays down to sleep tonight in Kerobokan jail, knowing it could well be her second last night in Bali’s infamous prison, it will be little wonder if she gets very little rest at all.
Three thousand, four hundred and five, give or take, is the number of nights Schapelle has spent in custody on the Indonesian island since her arrest for attempted drug smuggling back in October 2004. More than nine years of her life has been lost in the process.
Now all that stands between her and freedom (albeit on parole) is the receipt of papers from the Justice Ministry in Jakarta authorising her release, and a couple of signatures.
“She is happy, really excited,” one of Schapelle’s fellow inmates exclusively told The Australian Women’s Weekly this evening from inside Kerobokan. “She is also really nervous about what is waiting for her on the outside.”
In the immediate short-term, exactly what is waiting for her on the outside is a media mob. Cameras trained on the prison’s only exit, the media pack has been lying in wait for four days, when word of Schapelle’s imminent release first trickled out.
Speculation is rife among the waiting media throng that Team Schapelle (led by her sister Mercedes) has already done the media deal that will bring Schapelle’s story to an expectant – if divided – Australian public. Yet sources close to the Corby family have indicated no such deal has been done, with all of their energy currently focused on getting Schapelle out of jail.
What awaits the former Gold Coast beautician beyond the immediate short-term, past the camera lenses and long after her tell-all interview is in the can, is a whole lot more complicated.
Practically speaking, under the terms of her parole which lasts until July 2017, she cannot leave the island of Bali and must live with her sister, Mercedes at the home in Kuta she shares with her Indonesian husband, Wayan Widyartha and their children.
How Schapelle adjusts to life outside the walls of Kerobokan remains to be seen.
Quite apart from being the most famous Australian in Australia’s most popular travel destination – and the round-the-clock attention that will bring – she has nine years of incarceration to process and deal with.
As convicted Bali 9 drug smuggler Renae Lawrence told The Weekly when I met her in Kerobokan jail last year, as awful as the prison experience may be, readjusting to life on the outside was “just as terrifying”.
“You become used to life in prison after a while,” she said. “I don’t know how I would cope on the outside.”
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