At Sydney, their bags were taken to the international airport, to join Australian Airlines flight AO7829 to Bali.
The bags were scanned with hand-held monitors and cleared for loading. The three suitcases went through the security X-ray. The bodyboard was too big for the conveyor. It was put on a trolley and put into a baggage canister that contained two of the other bags. It was one of the last items put into the canister, placing it near the front. It would be one of the first items taken out in Bali.
The canister was closed by a canvas flap, but not locked. It was held for about 97 minutes until about 9.45am, half an hour before the Bali flight's departure.
All the baggage transfers were monitored by CCTV. There are no other security measures in these areas - big, open areas to which anyone with an "airside" security pass has access.
There are no inspections of bags or vehicles to check what staff with Aviation Security Identification Cards carry in and out of the airport.
The Australian Federal Police say drug dealers are known to use innocent travellers as unsuspecting drug "mules". They have arrested baggage handlers at Sydney International Airport for the offence. Drugs are inserted in luggage at one airport, a photograph of the target bag and its tag are emailed to the destination airport, where baggage handlers remove the drugs before the passenger collects the bag.
Ngurah Rai Airport, Denpasar, the holiday begins
The flight landed in Bali around 2.30pm local time. Spirits were high. Now to collect their bags and take a taxi to their hotel. Mercedes would be waiting.
Their bags were X-rayed before moving to the baggage carousel. By the time the four got there, the bags were on the carousel. But not the bodyboard. It had been set apart on the floor.
Schapelle Corby was struggling with her bag, so Ally told James to help her with the bodyboard. They took it to the customs counter of Igusti Ngurah Nyoman Winata.
Accounts conflict of what happened next. Corby says she saw that people ahead were opening their bags. So she put the bodyboard on the counter and began to open it.
The bag was found to contain the bodyboard, flippers and 4.1 kilograms of top-quality hydroponic marijuana in two plastic bags, one inside the other, the size of a pillow case. The bags were placed in front of the bodyboard, next to the zip.
The customs officers got very excited. It was their biggest marijuana intercept.
Shocked, at times tearful, Schapelle Corby said she had never seen the marijuana before. She insisted it must have been put in her luggage during transit. So any video images showing the bodyboard bag's size and shape while it was in Corby's care were important.
Her lawyers were later to ask for them. But the CCTV at the Brisbane Qantas check-in was experiencing problems; any images recorded that morning were wiped 25 days later.
At Brisbane the weights of the bags had not been individually recorded. Their weight on check-in and on arrival in Bali was crucial. In Bali, customs and police ignored it.
February 2005, Denpasar District Court
Mr Winata was the first witness called when Schapelle Corby's trial opened in the Denpasar District Court, the equivalent of an Australian Supreme Court. Mr Winata said that when he told Corby to open the bag, she opened a front pocket, saying: "Nothing in there."
He again ordered her to open the main flap. "The suspect (appeared) to panic. When I opened the bag a little, she stopped me and said, 'No.' I asked why. She answered, 'I have some...' She looked confused."
Winata said he opened the bag and saw the flippers, the plastic bags with the marijuana and the bodyboard. "I asked the suspect what was in the plastic bags. She said it was marijuana. I asked her, 'How do you know?' She said, 'I smelled it when you opened the bag'." A second customs officer supported his evidence.
Asked for her response, Corby got to her feet and angrily declared: "He's lying." In a strong voice, she said: "I opened the bag at the customs counter. He did not ask me. I opened it myself. I saw a plastic bag inside. It had been half opened." Corby made a gesture of recoiling. "Oh! The smell!"
The marijuana was in a bag that has a nozzle through which air is extracted to compact the contents. Customs photos taken at Denpasar clearly show this bag was inserted upside down into another identical bag. Other photos show customs officers handling the marijuana through the bottom of the inner bag.
Yet the officers denied to Corby's lawyers that they opened the bodyboard bag after the drugs were detected by the X-ray machine, or that they inspected the drugs then shut the bag.
Corby said the bag had been unzipped and zipped shut. She indicated how the two zips now met in the middle, but she always zipped the bag shut from right to left with a single zip.
Mr Winata denied customs officers had slit open the inner bag. Corby said the bag was "half opened" and was giving off an overpowering smell. The customs officers confirmed her reaction.
In court, the inner bag was instantly noticeable: the bottom was sealed with black tape.
Asked to show the position of the drugs bag when he found it, Mr Winata placed it upright in the outside bag, with the taped end down - reversing the positions shown by the customs photographs. He insisted he had not made a mistake.
Prosecutor Ida Bagus Nyoman Wiswantanu did not question Mr Winata's answers.
Holes in the argument
The customs officers had neglected four basic investigative procedures. They handled the outside drug bag with unprotected hands, taking no precautions against contaminating the only item of evidence. They also handled the bottom of the inner bag when they took out the marijuana.
At the airport, Ally McComb, then later Mercedes, demanded the bags be fingerprinted. They got the same reply. "Too late. Too many people have touched them."
Corby's lawyer, Lily Sri Rahaya Lubis, and her assistant, Vasu Rasiah, insist that only the external bag was contaminated. Most of the bag that contained the drugs was still clean because it had not been removed from the outer bag. Only the bottom of the inner bag had been handled.
The fingerprint evidence is basic and important. If Corby's prints are on either bag, she is condemned. If they are not, it is strong evidence for the defence, although not conclusive.
In late December, after repeated requests to have the evidence fingerprinted, the lawyers confronted the director of Bali's drugs bureau, Senior Commissioner Bambang Sugiarto, in charge of the investigation.
Mr Sugiarto had the bags brought to his office in Ms Lubis's presence. "He confirmed the inside bag had not been removed. He said he would have it fingerprinted," Ms Lubis said. It wasn't.
But on February 3, when Corby made her second court appearance, the inner bag was taken out of the outer bag and handled freely by a number of people, including customs officer Winata, prosecutor Wiswantanu and assistant judge I Gusti Lanang Dauh.
Later that day the frustrated defence lawyers made a formal application to have the bags fingerprinted. Chief Judge Linton Sirait said he would consider it. Two court sittings later, the lawyers are still waiting for his decision.
A second basic procedure was overlooked at the airport. No attempt was made to search or weigh the other luggage, even after Corby demanded it. No mention was made of this by the prosecution. Or of the failure to take fingerprints.
The third overlooked procedure is even more basic. CCTV cameras at the Bali airport could corroborate or contradict Corby's account of what happened in customs. The prosecutor said the tapes were not checked. The defence has asked to see them. The prosecutor said he would check to see if they are available.
There was a fourth failure. The X-ray machine that detected the marijuana does not take photos. So no image was available to show the location of the marijuana in the bodyboard bag before it got to customs.
The prosecution closed its case on February 17. It relies entirely on indisputable evidence that the marijuana was found in Corby's bodyboard bag and on the contested testimony of two customs officers and two police about her actions and responses.
Thursday March 3, the defence begins
Schapelle Corby's lawyers have several points to make.
Why, if Corby was smuggling the drugs, did she not take the basic precaution of putting a lock on her bodyboard bag?
Why did she not put the drugs behind the bodyboard, which would have concealed them from anyone opening the bag? Why did she not try to conceal the contents of the plastic bags?
Why would anyone risk a death sentence smuggling marijuana to Bali, where it will sell for much less than in Australia?
Where is the police evidence that Corby or any of her family had connections with drug traffickers?
The federal police confirm that Corby has no criminal record. Queensland police have no intelligence to relate her to drugs.
The drug's wholesale price in Brisbane is $4000 for half a kilogram. Where did a woman who works in a fish and chip shop get the $36,000 it could cost to buy 4.1 kilograms?
The defence will argue that the marijuana was put in the bag in Brisbane by an employee with "airside" access, most likely for pickup in Sydney.
But the pickup was somehow missed and the marijuana travelled on to Bali. The defence will also argue that the drugs were placed in the wrong bag on the wrong flight.
They will argue that the positioning of the marijuana in front of the bodyboard indicates it was inserted in haste during transit.
The problem is that the defence can establish a lot of doubt but no proof. From the outset, Mr Wiswantanu insisted that the only way he would accept that Corby was innocent was proof - visual or by weight - that the marijuana was not in the bodyboard bag when she checked it in at Brisbane airport. Or visual evidence of someone putting the drugs in the bodyboard bag.
Any chance of getting that evidence has gone. Qantas says the CCTV tapes were wiped on November 2, two weeks before it received a letter from the lawyers officially requesting copies.
But Corby's lawyers say their first request for the tapes was made on October 14, six days after Corby's arrest, to a Qantas security official who had flown from Sydney to Denpasar to meet them. This request was repeated a number of times.
The lawyers say that, in the last week of October, the Qantas security official told them the tapes were going to be destroyed within a week. On October 28, they sent the security official an email, noting this, and requesting copies of the CCTV tapes before they were wiped. This did not happen.
Mr Wiswantanu is demanding the death penalty.
He has successfully prosecuted six foreigners for importing drugs, one of whom got the death penalty.
If she is convicted, Schapelle Corby will face a firing squad. She is fighting for her life.
now theres a compelling 'witness'. 
