Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan wanted their executions to have a greater meaning and hoped the awareness would bring an end to the death penalty.
The drug smugglers' lawyer Julian McMahon saw the Australians hours before their executions, when they were determined to be strong as they said their goodbyes to their families.
Mr McMahon, who has spent years defending and raising awareness of their rehabilitation since their crime 10 years ago, remained on Nusakambangan island and heard the shots that killed them on Wednesday.
He spoke to the witnesses and confirmed reports the pair were concerned for the six other prisoners there with them.
Chan, who wore the jersey of NRL club Penrith, did a roll call of their names to check each was okay. Both men led the group in song.
"In dying really they did their best thing that they did in their life because for the last few years of their life their intention was to improve things for other people," Mr McMahon said on Thursday.
"They wanted to support the people around them and to make it clear that executing prisoners was a fundamentally wrong thing to do.
"They would be pleased that there was so much publicity surrounding their deaths because they want their deaths to have some purpose and meaning far greater than simply the story being about them.
"They want to help other prisoners on death row in other places.
"They want people ... to care enough about what has happened to do something about the death penalty."
Chan and Sukumaran's bodies remained in a Jakarta funeral home on Thursday afternoon with plans to repatriate them to Sydney within days.
Mr McMahon said he realised they weren't perfect men but said in recent years they had become wonderful.
They took pride that important Australians and ordinary people supported them because it validated for them the hard work they'd done to improve themselves.
It had been a battle to live well in prison, the lawyer said. For example, Sukumaran had to constantly defend his prison art workshop from drug gangs.
The pair's many acts of kindness are only now becoming known, including an orphanage Chan helped establish and the way Sukumaran defended the women's block from gang members when guards were absent during a riot at Kerobokan.
Mr McMahon said their families appreciated the professionalism of the guards in Nusakambangan's Besi prison who were kind to the men in weeks that could have been unbearable.
The pair won their trust and within the two months they were there, Chan became a key person in the chapel and Sukumaran had such respect from the guards he was able to access paints and canvasses to do his final works.
The families were grateful for this, even if decisions from higher up made things difficult.
Mr McMahon questions why at so many turns, Indonesian authorities disregarded continuing legal process and asserted his clients' executions would go ahead regardless, "deeply political manoeuvres clashing with the rule of law".
Mr McMahon took from Nusakambangan the memory of the eight prisoners farewelling their families and friends before their deaths.
They were beautiful, warm people, he recalled, who in some cases merited serious punishment for their crimes but not death.
"To me it exposes the complete and absolute futility of state-sponsored killing of prisoners, it's a complete nonsense," he said.
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