Narcotics offences are considered among the worst crimes against humanity in Indonesia. While murderers - and even terrorists - kill a finite number of people, many Indonesians view drug dealers as mass murderers.

Drug trafficking is considered a serious offence in Australia, but drug abuse tends to be viewed through the prism of personal choice.

Indonesians are more likely to see drug users as victims of evil dealers. As heroin and other drugs are often smuggled into the country by international traffickers, the scourge is seen as a foreign one.

This is a cultural difference that goes some way to explaining why the executions of Bali nine ringleaders Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan have been treated so differently in the Indonesian and Australian media.

The Australian media has focused on the extraordinary rehabilitation of the two men. Their metamorphosis from naive, selfish young men into the painter and pastor who transformed a once notorious jail has been well documented.

To the frustration of Chan and Sukumaran's lawyers and supporters, the Indonesian media has largely ignored the almost biblical narrative of their reformation.

Instead it has concentrated on the "drug emergency" in Indonesia and the need for capital punishment as a deterrent to narcotics smuggling.

President Joko Widodo is often quoted saying 40 to 50 Indonesians die a day due to drugs, although it has been pointed out by some commentators that these figures are dubious.

Asked in an interview with the television network al-Jazeera how he could justify taking another's life, Mr Joko talked about 4.5 million Indonesians whose lives are "in ruin" because of drugs. "Don't just look at the people who sell drugs, look at their victims," he said.

This is a refrain echoed by ordinary Indonesians, who constantly point to the deaths by overdose, the young lives lost to addiction and the anguish of their parents.

Cilacap undertaker Suhendro Putro has first-hand experience of executions. He provides the coffins and has the grisly task of washing the bodies after they are shot. Mr Suhendro described to Fairfax Media waiting in the prison compound on Nusakambangan island with families of the condemned prisoners, who screamed when they heard the shots that killed their loved ones ring into the night.

Despite witnessing this horror, he still believes in capital punishment for narcotics offenders because he says drugs destroy the lives of many.

Rosita, who runs a clothes stall at Teluk Penyu, the strip of beach in Cilacap just 200 metres from Nusakambangan, where Chan and Sukumaran will be executed, holds a similar view.

"I agree with the death penalty for drug criminals as drugs are very dangerous," she says.

This difference in perspective helps to explain why Australian media saw the display of military force in the convicted duo's transferral from Bali on Wednesday as over the top and ludicrous for two reformed drug dealers, while Indonesian media seemed unsurprised.

There are some voices of dissent. Indonesia's former foreign minister Hassan Wirajuda warned the Indonesian government to tone down its seemingly gleeful rhetoric about plans to execute foreign nationals on death row. "It's as if we enjoy killing people," he told the Jakarta Post.

But the divergent views of many Indonesians and Australians in relation to the death penalty for drug offences highlights stark cultural and political differences between the two nations despite our proximity.