Bali 9: The Untold Story (4 page)

F
rom an early age, Renae Lawrence was an all-or-nothing type of girl. She tipped the baby scales in October 1977 at a bonny 10-pounds-something, her father says, but the school photographs he shows off are of a wispy-thin adolescent.

Renae lived with her mother as a child, swapping to live with her father during her teenage years. And then, after a fiery clash in the wake of her eighteenth birthday, she snapped off all contact with Bob Lawrence. Father’s Day was forgotten, his birthday ignored and Christmases never acknowledged, as her new life revolved around her older and wiser lover. But when that relationship fractured and broke, she reappeared in her father’s life, and now, from her cell in
a Bali jail, sends cards addressed to ‘My dearest Daddy’, tears welling in her piercing blue eyes when told he might be unable to make it for her first court appearance.

As far back as memories go, Renae Lawrence searched for a sense of belonging, but when she found it she often thrust it aside in an instant. She had to do things 100 per cent or not at all. Life was black and white; shades of grey were nonexistent. Her highs were dizzy, her lows dismal. School could be such fun, friends filling her home with the contagious giggles of teenage girls, but in the same week she could—and once did—take a handful of muscle relaxant pills her father used for his crook neck, and swallow some of them. That incident, while she was still at school, would be copied again in her young life: when she broke up with her lover, and again when life got too hard living in an Indonesian police holding cell, she would find a way to try to take her life. But the next day, or the day after, the cheeky smile would reappear and Renae would be back on track.

The young woman who was unable to live by half measures had never travelled north of Scotts Head in NSW before adulthood. But in the six months between October 2004 and April 2005, she travelled overseas three times, Bali always the destination. She had known her co-worker Andrew Chan for less than a year before her first flight. But that didn’t stop her returning to Australia with him, chunks of heroin strapped firmly to her thighs. After that, he seemed
to have a hold on her, the fat envelope containing $10 000 handed to her only hours after that first trip cementing their one-sided relationship.

Two months later and in the lead-up to Christmas, she was back in Kuta again, but this time she returned empty-handed. Then, in April 2005, came her last trip; she teamed up with another of her co-workers, Martin Stephens. She had only met him a couple of months earlier, but, like everything else in her life, Renae didn’t need to be acquainted with someone for years before making a judgment on them. She either liked them or despised them—no middle ground there, either.

The young woman who had grown up in a small western suburb of Newcastle, attending the local high school and living in the area until she boarded her flight direct from Sydney to Denpasar, would soon become international news. Again it was all or nothing: Renae Lawrence, who grew up yearning to be a police officer, would end up belonging in the annals of history as a drug smuggler.

Each year in Australia, more than 50 000 divorces are granted, with about half of them involving children. Renae’s mother and father joined the queue of parents whose relationships crack and then break early; according to Bob Lawrence, it was around the time their little girl became a toddler. It wasn’t a benevolent parting, the way Bob explains it, and the relationship between Renae’s parents remains splintered. Renae was too young to understand her parents’ fraught relationship, and went
to live with her mother, her father counting down the days to every second weekend, when she would come to stay. But that changed, too, when he broke his neck a couple of years later. Bob Lawrence found he couldn’t care for his little charge and, without anyone to help, he gave up the precious weekends they had shared.

Almost a year passed without any regular contact between father and daughter. But once Bob had recuperated from the operation on his neck, the little girl began visiting again, every second weekend. And her visits comfortably replaced the weekend fishing and shooting trips he had liked so much.

‘One day I smacked her on the back of the hand because she broke the stereo needle,’ Bob recalls. ‘I said, “You’re not supposed to touch that!” and I smacked her…and she cried and cried and cried. She cuddled up to me and said, “You’re not supposed to smack me”, and I said, “Why’s that?” and she said, “You love me”.’

Renae was three at the time but already she ruled the house. It was only a handful more years later when, on the brink of adolescence, Renae moved in with her father. From day one she had him wrapped around her little finger, controlling what, how and when they did things. Bob was strict—really strict—in a protective sort of way, but Renae got what she wanted most times. ‘If I had a lady friend and she didn’t like her, that was it,’ Bob says by way of explanation. Given that, it was just as well that Renae took a shine to Bob’s second wife, Jenny, from their first meeting.

All kids have a passion, and Renae’s is obvious from the moment you take the lid off the olive green shoe box brimming with photos and memorabilia. ‘For the best Fisher Man in the world’, the card reads. ‘For you dad cause you’re the best and only dad anyone would want and have.’ You can’t miss the big fish that acts as the focus of the card, and it’s not the only clue to Renae’s first love. Photographs of Renae fishing dominate her teenage years; it seemed to be everything to her. She loved getting dressed to go fishing, carefully packing her rod and tackle, setting out for the adventure, and beating everyone else to the catch of the day. At the annual local junior fishing championships, she would take home the trophy on more than one occasion, even beating the boys. When Renae cast her rod into the water, the whole world stopped. She belonged.

Often Bob and Renae would set off together, rods over the shoulder, to try their luck, leaving Jenny behind. At other times Jenny would tag along. ‘We’d go out weekends,’ Jenny says. ‘I’d go out on the boat but they’d fish all weekend.’ Renae’s relationship with her stepmother was good right from the time they met. Bob had taken his daughter down to the local club for a cheap dinner. Renae would tease her father about Jenny, who also clicked quickly with the tomboy by her father’s side. Soon the three of them got on like wildfire, the two women in the house plotting and planning to get their own way. And they always did.

Renae loved animals, especially dogs. One day she decided she wanted a pet dog, and with Jenny onside Renae fronted her father, who was working in the family garage. He agreed, suggesting that it should be a border collie. Renae knew immediately that she had won and, minutes later, she and Jenny were back, car keys at the ready. They’d found a pedigree border collie advertised in the local newspaper—just the one Bob had wanted, they said—and it was only up the road. Misty joined the family the same afternoon.

It was that love of animals and fishing that served as the bedrock of Renae’s adolescence. She spent time with both her families—her father and stepmother, and her mother and stepfather—and the small circle of friends she had made at her local high school. They were friends who understood that her passion for school started and ended with soccer and woodwork. Most of the other classes failed to capture her interest, with some people believing she battled academically along the way.

After school, and on weekends, all that was forgotten and Renae Lawrence would spend most of her time at home, rarely out of her father’s sight. And that’s the way Bob liked it. Although dollars were stretched and holidays not common, every now and again they would get away, and it was on one of those trips that Burubi Beach won Renae’s heart. She bought a T-shirt there and wore it day in and day out, to the exclusion of all the others in her cupboard.

Cars were Renae’s other passion, and from the time she could walk she could be found wedged under one of the cars her father, a motor mechanic by trade, was working on. She renewed her crush on them in her final years of school, when senior students were being prepared for the workforce. She needed to clock up some job experience hours, and before long was a regular at a local smash repairs shop. And she didn’t just like it—she loved it. She would jump out of bed with a spring in her step and come home talking twenty to the dozen about all sorts of car things. After finishing school, she went back to work at the shop for a while, and by all reports was a valuable worker who colleagues labelled easily as diligent and reliable.

Turning eighteen heralds a new independence for most young people, and Renae was no different. She decided that her coming-of-age meant she now could dictate when she went out and when she returned home. Bob and Jenny Lawrence saw it very differently. Bob didn’t care much whether his daughter was eight or eighteen—he worried just the same every time she stepped out of the house. She was his precious only child. Eventually he confronted his daughter, telling her that she had to abide by the laws he laid down while she was living at home—he expected her home at a reasonable hour.

Renae ignored him. She would leave the house at 8 or 9 p.m. on some nights with a group of girlfriends, not returning before 2 or 3 a.m. the next morning. And,
before long, Bob Lawrence had had enough: ‘I said, “No, not while you live here. I’m not going to lie at home in bed and worry about you being raped or whatever.”’ But it was the next sentence, delivered as much in haste as anger, that turned events so quickly. ‘I told her to make sure she took everything [if she left] because she wasn’t coming back. And she didn’t come back.’

Within a short time, Renae was living with Tracie Sansom, her older and wiser lover and the mother of three young children. Renae quickly shut the door on her old world, cutting off all contact with Bob and Jenny. She had found a new place to belong. To outsiders, Renae and Tracie might have seemed the most unlikely of matches: a gullible teenager who had never had to fend for herself and an older woman who had experienced much more; a lonely young woman looking to belong and a mother busy with one son and two daughters of her own. Renae had never experienced a serious relationship, despite her family teasing her about the cute bloke at the smash repairs shop. But despite those odds, Renae fell desperately and fully in love with Tracie, insiders say. Tracie became her companion and lover, her mentor and teacher. And her partner in life.

Renae loved her instant family, too. She felt cared for. She fitted in, and the tribe of children who would so often fill the house with squeals and laughter made her feel important. Renae was a willing volunteer when it came to helping care for the children—she regularly offered to babysit them. And she frequently made
mischief with them. The children, for their part, genuinely liked the young woman who had become such a big part of their family. They respected her, but also considered her their friend.

Life was full of fun and music and laughs, and the weeks quickly turned into months. And, before long, the months had turned into years. Renae met new friends, mainly through Tracie, and the pair of them would socialise easily, sharing a drink at the local club, sitting around Tracie’s home playing music and just talking. They’d work, and look after their animals, go to parties and do the same household chores every other young couple did.

Bob and Jenny Lawrence were both pretty much forgotten after their daughter moved away, as Renae seemed determined to wipe out the years she had lived with them. That ate away at Bob. He believed he was owed the respect any father was, and that his daughter should acknowledge important events like birthdays and Christmas. But he played pretty much the same game, and never went out of his way to re-establish contact with the daughter who lived just across town and who, he now learnt, was a lesbian. He found her sexual preference pretty hard to take—not because he considered himself homophobic, but because he couldn’t remember her showing any interest in females previously. He’d even gone on and on about the boy down at the smash repairs shop and she’d turned red with embarrassment, and he’d never had any reason to
suspect that he would not one day have a son-in-law and possibly even a handful of grandchildren. But he’d learnt quickly—because word travels fast in a place like Wallsend—that she had shacked up with her girlfriend and started a whole new life. And it was clear that she did not want any contact with her father or stepmother.

‘Jen kept saying she’d come around,’ says Bob. ‘I found it hard at first, and then I thought, she has her life to lead. I didn’t contact her either—not while she lived with her [Tracie].’

Like so many parents, Bob and Jenny didn’t like Renae’s choice of partner—who wants to stay out of the public eye—and they made it pretty clear that while their daughter was welcome in their home, her friend was not. They might acknowledge that their daughter now shared a life with someone, but that didn’t mean they were required to befriend the woman, or welcome her into their home. But that just served to push Renae further away.

Renae had been given a choice: her past life, where she was told what to do and when to do it; or a shiny new life in which she made her own decisions and was treated as an equal partner. It was an easy choice: Renae chose her partner, and, despite Wallsend being a small place, she severed all contact with her father and stepmother. She no longer visited Bob’s parents either, and that really grated on him, as Renae was their only granddaughter. He could understand that their estrangement meant that she would no longer grace his
home, but he couldn’t understand why she would take that out on his parents. It showed a lack of respect, and that was not how he had brought her up.

The years came and went. So did family birthdays, anniversaries and get-togethers. Bob felt as though he’d lost his only child—but Renae was looking to the future, not the past. At least, until late 2004, when her relationship with Tracie, the basis for her future, came crashing to the ground. The break-up, friends say, meant that Renae lost her partner, her three young friends whom she saw as family, and her future.