As the doors slid back at Brisbane airport's arrivals hall early on Thursday morning, Renae Lawrence paused.
For a moment she was frozen, clearly dreading the media storm that was about to her engulf her.
After wiping away a tear with the back of her hand she took one deep breath and summoned the courage to move again
Head down. Eyes red and teary. Resigned to the two minutes of craziness ahead.
Bali Nine drug smuggler Renae Lawrence covers her head with a towel as her car is surrounded by media after arriving at Newcastle airport. Source: AAP
"Renae you look a little bit overwhelmed by being back home. How does it feel?"
"Are you fearful for your life now you're back in Australia, we know there's been lots of death threats."
"What do you plan on doing now?"
She muttered only a few words in Indonesian to thank the country's government for releasing her 13 years into a 20-year sentence.
Determinedly zigzagging her way through the media scrum, she found the relative privacy of the airport transit bus that would take her to the domestic terminal and her final flight home to Newcastle.
And there she sat, for almost three hours, in the public waiting lounge, quietly chatting to her mother Beverley Waterman and other supporters who'd made the long flight home from Bali with her.
At times she was using a mobile phone, possibly letting those closest to her know that she was back, after 13 years in Balinese prisons for acting as a drug mule for the infamous Bali Nine smuggling ring.
The convicted drug smuggler tries to cover her face from the media. Source: AAP
After she declined once more to comment, a much smaller media pack kept its distance.
At this point, she did not appear angry or resentful about the media attention, rather resigned.
"It's very overwhelming," her mother explained, in saying there would be no comment.
There was a small smile when one reporter discreetly approached and said she was happy that Lawrence was free.
