A woman has avoided full-time custody after being caught on her 24th birthday couriering 66 grams of the drug ice from Wollongong.
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The drug was found during a traffic stop in Pambula in August.
Magistrate Doug Dick sentenced Courtney Mackay Hurley in Bega Local Court to a two year Intensive Corrections Order with supervision for supplying the drug.
Hurley’s lawyer told the court her life had been threatened by outlaw motorcycle club members demanding she pay for the value of the drugs confiscated by police, and that she “didn’t have the means to possess drugs of that street value”.
Hurley, who pleaded guilty in September, also received a 12 month ICO for using stolen credit cards and dishonestly obtaining financial benefit by deception, and a further 12 month ICO for dealing with the proceeds of a crime.
Magistrate Dick also fined Hurley a total of $5000 and ordered to pay compensation of $615.
“It is not a glittery world, it is a dangerous and sordid world,” Magistrate Dick told Hurley during sentencing.
Hurley told police after her arrest in August she had collected the drug in Wollongong for another person and transported it to the Far South Coast.
Hurley’s defence lawyer told the court his client had admitted being involved in the chain of supply of the drug, but had since turned her life around, and was “driven not by greed but status” at the time of her offending.
He told the court “she was not a major player”, but a “courier” in the supply chain.
“These drugs were not hers to be sold by her,” he said.
He told the court she was “caught up in a web of which she was a willing pawn for others”, and not in a “rational headspace”, and was easily taken advantage of.
He told the court Hurley had first used ice at the age of just 15, stopping at the age of 17 before falling into “bad habits” at 22 and suffering a “personal decline”.
During sentencing magistrate Dick told Hurley she had good prospects of rehabilitation, and that he wanted to send her a “clear and unmistakable message”, and provide her with a “wake up call”.
“I accept at the time you were in a dark place,” he told the court.
“The future is now in your hands, if you end up behind bars it’s because you failed,” he told the court.
