Schapelle Corby - Early Life

Early Life

Corby lived in the town of Tugun on the Gold Coast in the Australian state of Queensland. She enrolled in a part-time beauty therapy course at a TAFE institute, finishing two of four course modules. She then worked in her family's fish and chip shop. Her father worked as a coal miner. Corby’s older sister, Mercedes, married a Balinese man and lives in Bali. In the mid-1990s, Corby met a Japanese man, Kimi Tanaka, who was on a working holiday in Australia and the two began dating. On his return to Japan, Corby continued to visit him and the two married in June 1998 in the Japanese town of Omaezaki, Shizuoka Prefecture. While living in Omaezaki she worked at a ryokan (Japanese inn). Her husband also found work in the hospitality industry and as a seasonal worker on nearby tea farms. The couple separated and Corby returning to Australia in July 2000. The couple's divorce was finalised in 2003. Tanaka remarried and became a father and, after October 2004, did not have any further contact with Corby. Returning home to Australia, Corby had a stopover in Bali where she had been five times since the age of sixteen, which included stopovers on her way to or from Japan.