Exclusive: Inside Schapelle's new prison cell

A single mattress, a doona and Donald Duck… As these shock photographs reveal, Schapelle Corby has created a strangely cosy world within Bali’s Kerobokan Prison.

The mountain of stuffed toys and sheets covered in love hearts may make it look like a teenage girl’s overcrowded bedroom, but this is the Balinese prison cell that Schapelle Corby calls “home”. It is in this surprising setting that the former Gold Coast beautician, now 34, paints her toenails, dyes her prematurely grey hair and lies on her bed reading books about the meaning of life as she ponders what she’s lost and how she’ll cope with another 11 years behind bars.

As news broke in Australia last week of a possible suicide attempt, Kerobokan Prison’s longest-serving female prisoner – jailed in 2004 for trafficking 4.2kgs of cannabis – was back doing what she does every monotonous day. There’s reading, beading, painting and staring into space, sometimes for hours at a time.

“Every day I see Schapelle sitting in front of her cell in a daze,” a fellow prisoner says. “Once I asked what she was doing and she told me, ‘Waiting, waiting, that’s all I do. I wait because there is nothing to do in here except wait.’ She looks really sad.”

Around the time of Schapelle’s birthday two months ago, prisoners reportedly found her slumped on the ground drowsy, suffering the effects of a drug overdose. She had apparently swallowed nine days’ worth of her prescribed anti-psychotic medication in one go. Her sister, Mercedes, is unsure whether it was a suicide attempt, although Schapelle has cut her wrists twice in the past three years.