Wild Spirit

How a year in the African rainforest changed an Australian woman’s life.

In June 1975, Australian couple Annette and Win Henderson find themselves stranded in Libreville, Gabon, after travelling halfway across Africa. When a thief robs their Kombivan, they are left penniless - with no way to go back and no way to go on. They are saved by a chance meeting with a local expat, who offers them jobs in a remote mining camp in the mountains, close to the Congo border, in a region never visited by tourists, accessible only by canoe.

At the camp, Annette battles isolation, culture shock and the challenges of a job for which she is ill-prepared. She finds solace and joy in the vast equatorial forest - a world as enthralling as any David Attenborough film - and when she adopts orphaned baby gorilla, Josie, her life changes forever.

Wild Spirit is the intensely moving story of a young Australian woman suddenly immersed in a frontier world, coming face to face not only with the impact of the human population on endangered wildlife, but also with her own quest for meaning.