In August last year, Christopher Preca, an out-of-work crane operator from the Blue Mountains, and Jackson Giles-Adams, a welder from Bowral, set off from the NSW coast in an ageing, 16-metre trawler to collect a few tonnes of cocaine.

Preca, then 32, had lost his job when the pandemic struck and fell into a debt spiral to fuel his drug use, owing money to figures in Sydney’s underworld. He and Giles-Adams, 27, navigated the 40-year-old Coralynne 150 nautical miles out from the Newcastle shoreline to meet a larger Chinese fishing boat that had zigzagged down from Asia.