news

Schapelle Corby shows her face for the first time since in Australia in a mocking video.

Schapelle Corby has cheekily mocked the media with an Instagram video of her watching live television footage of two black vans on a motorway leading media on a false trail after she flew in from Bali.

The convicted drug smuggler has eluded journalists in her first 48 hours back on home soil and the clip is believed to be the first time she has shown herself publicly since her return to Australia.

The one-time Gold Coast beauty student hadn’t been properly sighted since returning to Queensland early on Sunday morning, sparking an elaborate cat-and-mouse game with waiting media.

The Instagram clip posted late on Monday night starts with a large television screen showing live chopper footage from Channel 7’s Sunrise program of two black vans taking a motorway offramp.

The camera pans away to show Ms Corby, dressed in black and white, smiling and giving a one-shoulder shrug as she stands watching the television with other adults in what appears to be a hotel room.

It’s been thought she might be hiding out in Brisbane’s Sofitel hotel.

FREEDOM hashtagoiloncanvas

A post shared by Schapellecorby (@schapelle.corby) on

“There’s the convoy. ‘Pelle’s being chased by helicopter,” her sister Mercedes is heard saying as she shoots the video and gives a chuckle.

“In that car, but … there we are,” she is heard saying as she pans to her sister.

ADVERTISEMENT

Ms Corby this morning had 60,000 views of the Instagram clip.

Mercedes Corby also posted the video on her Instagram account, writing sarcastically: “Doing what they do best … factual news reporting!!!”

On Monday their mother, Rosleigh Rose, wasn’t keen to divulge Ms Corby’s whereabouts to a thinned-out media pack camped outside her Loganlea home, south of Brisbane.

“Didn’t you know? She caught a flight yesterday to Cairns,” Ms Rose said.

“Ummm, I might have to go to the airport to get on a plane to Darwin, Cairns, Gladstone, wherever.”

Is Cassandra Sainsbury following in Corby’s footsteps? We discuss in this special podcast episode. 

But in one of the stranger turns in a homecoming that already includes horror masks and media-duping convoys, the 39-year-old posted a picture of a surrealist portrait to her Instagram on Monday.

The artwork shows the former inmate riding a fantastical steed against a cosmic backdrop, aptly accompanied by the caption: “FREEDOM”.

Ms Corby was deported to Australia from Indonesia over the weekend, almost 13 years after she was caught with 4.1kg of marijuana in her boogie board bag at Bali’s Denpasar Airport.

00:00 / ???