The wheel-chair bound mother of two landed in Sydney on a Qantas flight around 7:30am (AEDT), seven and a half hours after departing from Manila.
“Exciting”, was the word the 43-year-old used to describe her feelings about returning home as she boarded flight QF20 with her sister, Lillian.
On touching down in Sydney, her lawyer, Harry Friedman, kept Ms Solon out of the glare of waiting media, saying his seriously-ill client was “fatigued, anxious but excited.”
Press conference
Later Ms Alavarez attended a press conference with her barrister Marcus Einfeld who said Ms Alvarez bears no grudge against Australia.
Ms Alvarez did not speak at the press conference but speaking on her behalf, Mr Einfeld described his client's four years in the Philippines as a "horrible experience".
He said she was happy to be home and looking forward to being reunited with her two sons.
"She's delighted to be reunited with her children, she's certainly very appreciative of Australia in this respect.”
He said "Australia made a big mistake here, a tragic serious error, but
it was an error of systems..”
“And just as Australia can make mistakes and do terrible things
to people, it can also do something which many countries don't, and
that's a capacity to recompense and make good, " he said.
Background
Ms Solon left behind two sons behind in Brisbane when she was mistakenly deported to the Philippines in July 2001.
She had been found four months earlier in the northern New South Wales town of Lismore, dazed and injured.
After receiving medical treatment in Sydney, immigration officials fetermined she was illegally living in Australia and was removed from the country.
The realisation that Ms Solon was in fact a naturalised citizen, who had lived in Australia for 20 years, was discovered by the Department of Immigration in 2003.
But it Ms Solon’s predicament did not come to light until April after a government inquiry began into the wrongful 10-month detention of a permanent Australian resident, Cornelia Rau.
Since then, more than 200 immigration detention and deportation cases have been brought before the Commonwealth Ombudsman for investigation.
Ms Solon’s whereabouts were not known to Australian officials until May.
She was tracked down at a Catholic hospice in the city of Olongapo, near Manila, after an Australian priest recognised her on a satellite television broadcast.
Her return to Australia follows months of negotiations on a compensation deal with the government concerning provision of accommodation and care assistance which was finalised a short time ago.