Media pack welcomes Lawrence
Bali Nine smuggler returns
BALI Nine heroin smuggler Renae Lawrence waited 13 years to be back on Australian soil.
And the only words she uttered as she ploughed her way through a hungry media pack were mumbled in Indonesian.
“Thanks to the Indonesian government. That’s it,” Lawrence said in the language she learned while locked up in three Indonesian jails since being convicted for trying to smuggle heroin out of Bali in 2005.
She was spared a dramatic clash with NSW police, who want to speak to her about outstanding warrants, but faced a chaotic media scrum she was keen to avoid.
The 41-year-old was confronted by cameras and reporters when she touched down in Brisbane at dawn yesterday after her overnight flight from Bali, and again when she landed in her hometown of Newcastle about 11.15am with mother Beverley Waterman and stepbrother Allan in tow.
They were last to disembark the Virgin flight, walking quickly off the tarmac and into the small Newcastle terminal.
Head bowed, Lawrence knocked two reporters over on her way out and sprinted towards a car waiting outside.
Supporters waited for her luggage as Lawrence covered her head with a towel inside the white Ford Ranger.
NSW Police opted not to arrest her as she got off the plane over a high-speed 2005 car chase shortly before she was arrested at Bali airport with 2.7kg of heroin strapped to her body.
Officers will instead work with her lawyers to bring her to a police station to face charges in coming days.
The former panel beater appeared anxious and teary as she and her family landed in Brisbane where Mrs Waterman begged journalists to leave her daughter alone.
“We don’t want to comment. We’ve got nothing to say. Please, just leave us,” she told reporters soon after she and her daughter disembarked.
Lawrence only spoke once, to thank the Indonesian government which reduced her life sentence to 20 years and then to 13 years after several remissions for good behaviour.
They quickly boarded an airport bus to transfer from the international to the domestic terminal where they sat quietly at the departure gate waiting for their flight to Newcastle.
Lawrence seemed subdued as she chatted quietly, glancing out at the planes on the tarmac and occasionally using a mobile phone.
Lawrence was released from Bali’s Bangli prison on Wednesday after serving 13 years for her role in a plot to import more than 8kg of heroin to Australia from Indonesia.