Jamie McKinnell

Thank you.

After 10 days in Sydney's Silverwater Prison, Ben Robert-Smith is on his way back to Queensland.

Yeah, I think it was mainly because of the level of interest in this case is obviously much higher than a lot of other criminal cases.

And to a certain extent, bail applications are predictable because the same kinds of arguments and rebuttals usually get thrown around in these bail applications.

But it was the level of interest that really stood out here.

So in Sydney's Downing Centre, the court moved it to one of the building's biggest courts on Level 5.

There are dozens of chairs in the public gallery there.

And they also had arrangements in place for an online stream of the proceedings as well, just in case they had capacity issues.

So even before this hearing started, it was pretty clear that they were anticipating a lot of interest and rightly anticipating that.

So we had a lot of journalists there, obviously, heaps of cameras outside the Downing Centre.

Interestingly, there were some supporters who were being quite visual outside the court as well.

There was a veteran there who was putting up two signs outside the entrance to the Downing Centre that said, following orders, with a picture of Ben Robert Smith.

And I saw another guy with a different kind of sign in support.

So it was obvious even then

approaching the court building that this was a very different type of bail application in the sense of the level of interest that it has generated.

Yeah, so he had his parents, Len and Sue Roberts-Smith.

They flew over from WA and they were sitting in the front row of the public gallery.

The rest of the gallery was full of mostly journalists and media representatives.

Ben Roberts-Smith wasn't there in person.

He was beamed into the courtroom on a video link.