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The Lion Behind the Anthill by Gill Shaddick is a captivating memoir about love, adventure and travel to exotic places. Gill met her soulmate Mike in Central Africa. He was a reckless, optimistic and adorable biologist who matched her thirst for adventure. They set out on an itinerant life of work and travel where nothing ever quite went to plan. In Iran, they lived an expat life of luxury; in Sudan they made do with no running water or electricity; in Zimbabwe, they had a fishing business on Lake Kariba in the middle of a war zone; in Scotland, they farmed rabbits on the remote Galloway peninsula. After surviving those challenges, they moved to Australia where Mike was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. While they shared the same goal – to regain Mike's health – their approaches set them as far apart as strangers in an unfamiliar terrain. Gill decided a new adventure was their only way out. The gamble paid off and delivered Mike back to life and love.
Gill Shaddick left Britain aged twenty-one to take up a job in Hong Kong and kept on travelling. She met her husband, Mike, in a township in Zambia where she was the only single girl and he the only single guy. Together they embarked on a peripatetic journey living in a dozen countries. They counted cotton bollworms in Egypt, Sudan and Iran, tagged eels in New Zealand, owned a fishing business on Lake Kariba in central Africa and ran a rabbit farm in one of Scotland's remotest corners. Their four daughters, each a constant source of joy, amusement and awe, were all born in different countries. In 1987, Gill and her family moved to Australia. Months later Mike was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and with that his future plans for overseas contracts disappeared overnight. But travel was Gill's passion and she determined there'd be many journeys ahead, at first with Mike, then backpacking with her daughters and ultimately going solo. Gill is a distant cousin of Robert Louis Stevenson. His grandfather's clock ticked out the hours as she grew up, which she credits as one reason why, from an early age, she was enchanted by travel and writing.
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