Schapelle Corby and This is My Surfboard? 🌊🏄

Schapelle Corby's board

Every February

From Schapelle Corby's autobiography

Two books that I read back-to-back recently seemed to weirdly complement one another in my mind.

Both were "autobiographies", but The Sandman's autobiography is much more fictional than fact, as The Sandman is just comedian Steve Abbott's invention for an Australian radio segment and stand-up comedy routine, as far as I know.

I didn't know anything about The Sandman until I read the 1998 book I found in an Op Shop recently and knew nothing about who Steve Abbott was.

I bought a t-shirt from REMO years ago with the above design of The Sandman in a boat staring into a lighthouse beam and wore that shirt around the house until it fell apart years later.

I only liked it because it reminded me of the Byron Bay lighthouse and found the cartoon image funny.

The Sandman's autobiography came out years before Schapelle Corby's autobiography did, but there were things in The Sandman's autobiography which grabbed my attention in hindsight of reading Schapelle Corby's autobiography first.

Because The Sandman's autobiography is based around the northern beaches of Sydney, the airport referred to above in the book would have been the Sydney airport where Schapelle left Australia to fly to Bali on October 8th, 2004, with her boogie board bag either filled with weed, or not filled with weed.

What Happened on October 8, 2004

To be honest, I can't even remember what happened on October 8th, 2004, or the songs that were top of the pop charts that day.

How did I not ever see that 'Call on Me' video above in 2004?

Better late than never, I guess?-)

Steve Abbott must have been proud of his efforts writing this book, because he certainly achieved his goal in the epilogue of the book, as it was pretty much a waste of time reading it, other than me finding out who this Sandman character was.
It's not all that funny to be honest IMO and I've since passed it on to a street library for some other reader's amusement ... or disappointment.

Schapelle Corby's autobiography is worth a read though, as I wrote in this recent post -

Saturday February 21st, 2026

What Dope Placed Weedless Wednesday on a Saturday?🚬🚭🤣

I still have no idea whether Schapelle Corby was guilty or not after I had finished reading her book, but I did find it amusing that Channel 9 in Australia made a TV series in 2014 about Schapelle Corby, which was directed by Anh Do's brother Khoa Do.

Schapelle TV Movie (2014)

Anh Do's autobiography 'The Happiest Refugee' is soon to be turned into a movie I hear, and I read his book last year just before seeing him bring the book to life on stage in Logan.

Taking my seat at 'The Happiest Refugee' on the night

I can't wait to see that story on the big screen.

I was surprised to see that Krew Boylan who played the Dolly Parton impersonator in the movie 'Seriously Red' played Schapelle Corby in the 2014 TV series.

Seriously Red (2022)

How to Celebrate Love Your Red Hair Day?🦰🤟

UPDATE: March 2nd, 2026

REMO Sandman T-shirts

Apparently, you can still buy Sandman shirts at REMO, but I'm over The Sandman to be honest.

UPDATE: March 6th, 2026

Schapelle TV Movie (2014)

I ended up watching the 2014 TV movie on the STAN streaming service the other night and thought that Khoa Do did a good job as director, but the script should have been written with a bit more ambiguity as to whether Schapelle actually was guilty or not of the crime she was sent to jail for, instead of showing her picking up drugs in South Australia right at the start of the show to take on the plane, as I don't think there was ever any real proof of that ever happening.

It sounds more like writers connecting dots that may or may not be there, as far as the real-life story goes.

I did find it personally funny that the Soap Opera 'The Bold and the Beautiful' was mentioned in those screen shots of the 2014 show above, as I'm related by marriage, according to my aunty, to one of the actresses off that show, not that we have ever met in real life that I know of.

And I have never watched one episode of that show up to this point in my life.

I thought that it was a bit ironic in hindsight that Vince Colosimo played Corby's lawyer and would later be busted on drug offenses in real life, too.