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Schapelle Corby Returns To Australia After 12-Year Bali Ordeal

The convicted drug smuggler arrives home to heavy media scrutiny.

Convicted drug smuggler Schapelle Corby will set foot on Australian soil on Sunday morning for the first time in more than 12 years.

Corby, who grew up on Queensland's Gold Coast, was due to fly out of Bali late Saturday -- leaving the Indonesian island where she was arrested in October 2004 with 4.2 kilograms of marijuana.

Corby spent 12.5 years in jail and on parole after she was convicted on a drug smuggling charge in 2005. She was spared the death penalty and was initially sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Corby, now 39, was holed up in her Bali villa for weeks ahead of her deportation, as media crews gathered outside hoping to catch sight of Australia's most infamous convicted drug smuggler.

She arrives home to heavy media scrutiny, which has followed her ever since her arrest at Denpasar International Airport in 2004.

Corby's case captured the attention of Australians, thousands of whom watched live as she learned her fate in a Balinese courtroom in 2005. She was released from the infamous Kerobokan Prison in February 2014, and remained living in Kuta on parole until her release on Saturday.

The Australian went all the way to the High Court in a bid to appeal her original 20-year conviction, but her final appeal was overturned in March 2008, almost four years after she was arrested. In the end, she was granted clemency in 2012 by President Yudhoyono, cutting her sentence by five years and allowing her to be granted parole the following year.

Corby's mother, Rosleigh Rose, said she's worried about how her daughter will adjust to life in Australia after more than a decade in Indonesia. She told The Courier Mail she spoke to Corby regularly on the phone and on Skype, but had not been to Indonesia for two years.

"When she gets here and settles in, we'll just have to make sure we get her out and about," she said.

"She hasn't been able to leave the house in Bali for a couple of weeks because all the media have been camped outside."

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