Bali nine drug mule Renae Lawrence finds gardening therapeutic in prison

The past few weeks have been difficult for Bali nine mule Renae Lawrence. "Probably for reasons you already know," she tells Fairfax Media during a rare interview at her prison in central Bali. Fellow Bali nine members Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan, the organisers of the plot to import more than eight kilograms of heroin into Australia in 2005, were executed on April 29. "Although it's hard, I try not to think about it," Lawrence says. "There are not any words that can actually explain that."

Lawrence has discovered the catharsis of gardening since being transferred to Bangli prison in March last year. She has an affliction the Indonesians call tangan panas (hot hands). "It's a bad thing," she says ruefully. "If you touch a flower, if you don't have the right hands apparently, the flower dies." After good-natured ribbing from the prison guards, Lawrence has vowed not to touch any more flowers. But she continues to water and maintain a small garden plot in front of a mural of a bucolic babbling brook.

Bali nine member Renae Lawrence, sentenced to 20 years in prison for drug trafficking, in her first interview since the deaths of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.Credit: Fairfax

"It is therapeutic. It takes the time away. You don't just sit in your room and look at the clock and go, 'Oh it's still ticking.' So it does help a lot," she says.

But even gardening has not provided much solace in recent weeks.

"On that subject the garden doesn't help that much because you actually know that it's always in your head. Some things when you garden, they just go, but nothing that you do is ever going to help with that one."

Bangli prison feels more like a faded tropical resort than a prison. Roosters crow, the air is thick with the hum of insects and the grounds are dotted with picturesque shrines and an organic vegetable garden. The doors to the cells are opened at 7.30am and prisoners are locked up again at 4.30pm.

But during the day Lawrence is free to garden or paint papier mache model boats, tissue boxes, ashtrays and guns that are sold at the prison.

"There is not a lot of freedom, but there is enough freedom to make me feel like I'm not locked in a dog pen," she says.

Lawrence is fluent in Indonesian; she apologises for her rusty English. She has no desire to serve out her remaining time in Australia. "I think I'd like to be here for the rest of my sentence," she says. "I've never been to an Australian jail. Thank God. I don't really know what it's like, what you can do, what you can't do. Here you can make things, you can plant things. As long as you adhere to the ... rules."

She prefers Bangli jail to Kerobokan, where she was previously incarcerated with Chan and Sukumaran. "Here it's more quiet. I'd say it is because from what I hear it is in the middle of nowhere. Because there are less guards we get to know the people. It takes time to build trust up but once you get that trust it's a very valuable thing to have. Especially in this country because that's what they basically go on, is trust. If you lose their trust, that's it, you'll never get it back."

Lawrence has served half her 20-year sentence and with remissions, her release may be imminent. It's something she prefers not to think about. "I don't know for sure how much longer. Not too much longer, maybe five [years]. Hopefully less but I haven't really asked. If we think about going home all the time, it doesn't help us, it just makes you more stressed. So it's better to just wake up in the morning, do what you've got to do and then go to bed and wake up the next morning. And one day it will come they will just call me and say: 'OK, you're going home.'"