They are the digital relics of Cassandra Sainsbury’s life and dreams – poignant reminders of an existence that changed shockingly and forever when Colombian authorities demanded she open a suitcase at Bogota’s international airport.

Before that moment the young Adelaide woman’s life was all about hope and ambition, about the things she loves and those that love her back.

It is all there, collected from social media posts and preserved in the internet’s digital memory. Now that same sunny life has been plunged into one of the world’s worst and most dangerous prisons.

Sooner or later – it could take years, depending on how she pleads – a Colombian court will decide Ms Sainsbury’s fate, but prosecutors would be hard-pressed to find anything genuinely sinister in the album of cherished pictures compiled by the woman accused of attempting to smuggle 5.8kg of cocaine.

There’s a picture of blue-eyed Evie, Husky “number 4”, and a little red heart to testify how much she adores the “absolutely stunning” puppy.

That was then.

Today she is constrained by walls and chains, ordered to do as she is told by guards and the female gangs that dominate the daily lives of 55,000 female prisoners jammed inside El Buen Pastor (The Good Shepherd) prison.

Ms Sainsbury, happy in the days before her ordeal began.

There’s a snap in the album of her wearing a white dress with spaghetti straps, hair styled and a smile on her face.

Today her wardrobe is the rough garb of a prisoner and her greatest hope would be that she could somehow go unnoticed.

Survival in El Buen Pastor means staying on the right side of the prison’s shakedown artists, rapists and killers.

Somehow, she must learn to survive in a penal institution that Sebastián Machado Ramírez, a former adviser to Colombia’s attorney-general, calls a bricks-and-tears “breach of human rights”.

The captions on many of Ms Sainsbury’s archived snapshots brim with optimism – #goodthingsarecoming and a wistful #takemeback beneath a post that cherishes memories of a tropical holiday when she was #happy.

Other photos are less straightforward, inviting the casual viewer to wonder about the spirit of the girl who is now in so much trouble.

The most striking is a crudely taken “selfie” of a young woman’s right side, where a heavily inked few lines of words are positioned just beneath her arm.

“First tattoo is a quote from Harry Potter. S’pose I should confess to my Harry Potter obsession! ” the caption says.

But ominously the tattoo’s message concludes:

“I solemnly swear I’m up to no good”.

Is the picture of Ms Sainsbury or is it a tattoo she admires on someone else?

There is no way to know for sure while she languishes behind El Buen Pastor’s walls, but either way some will see tragic irony in that bad-girl declaration.