Bali nine ringleader Myuran Sukumaran repeatedly told his lawyer Julian McMahon that he didn't want to die, saying even another two or three years alive would allow him to finish the painting projects he was planning.

While Sukumaran and Andrew Chan were ready to meet their fate in their last moments before execution, both men still had a fierce desire to live.

The bodies of the pair are expected to return home on Saturday morning, after their repatriation was delayed by a day.

Chan's mother and brother returned to Sydney on Friday morning, leaving Indonesia early so that Helen Chan could be with her husband, Ken, to grieve for the loss of their son.

The pair had wanted to accompany the body of Chan home but Mrs Chan, who was in hospital last month, found it deeply unsettling to be in Jakarta after the wrenching experience of the execution.

It is expected Chan's Indonesian wife, Febyanti Herewila, will accompany his body home.

Sukumaran's parents and siblings will also be on the flight, which is expected to land on Saturday morning.

The Chans, as well as some of the extended Sukumaran family took a Garuda Indonesia flight and left Sydney airport via a private exit.

'Julian, I don't want to die'

Mr McMahon said there was much the two men wanted to achieve, with Chan overseeing the creation of an orphanage in the eastern Indonesian island of Sabu, among other projects.

"Several times in the last one or two months, Myuran would grab me by the shoulders and, with half a laugh and with much seriousness too, would say:  'Julian Julian, I don't want to die," Mr McMahon said.

"[He said] 'I have got so much painting to do. If I could only live for another two or three years, there is so many things I want to paint.'

"He felt a desperate wish to paint in his last few days. He probably did at least a dozen paintings."

Mr McMahon recalled the extraordinary bravery of Sukumaran during the riot at Kerobokan prison in 2012, when gangsters seized control of the penitentiary and the guards fled in fear.

Sukumaran, a physically imposing figure who had trained in martial arts, first blocked the armoury to ensure they did not get weapons, and then moved to defend the women's section of the prison.

"It was Myuran who defended the entrance to [the women's prison]," Mr McMahon said.

"You could imagine what would happen in a riot if hundreds of prisoners, many of whom are gang members, had gotten into the womens' prison. The guards were nowhere to be seen.

"It was Myuran who was on the ground."

Chan, he said, quickly became a leading figure at the chapel on Nusakambangan, the island where they were executed.

On their last day on the island, which has seven prisons in a sprawling complex, other convicts streamed through the fence into Besi prison, where the death inmates were being held.

"They formed a circle and prayed together," Mr McMahon said.

Both men wanted their legacy to be a revitalised effort to abolish the death penalty worldwide.

In Indonesia, though, there is no sign that the government's fervour for executions has waned.

Plans are already in place to kill five murderers, while as many as 50 drug felons are also slated to be killed this year.