Elephant Dance

It's the middle of the night in the Namibian desert. When zoologist Tammie Matson wakes with a start to find two elephants standing right beside her tiny one-man tent, she makes a promise.

'If you just let me survive tonight I will give up Africa. I'll give it all up. Just don't let them stand on me.'

It's not a promise she will easily keep. At 29, Tammie has spent nearly half her life in Africa working as a conservationist. Africa is her first love, and Tammie has just landed her dream gig researching ways to resolve conflict between the exploding population of elephants stampeding through villages and terrorising the locals.

But as her thirties approach, Tammie is ever conscious of not having ticked those boxes: no house, no job, no kids and no husband. Broke and with her visa running out, it seems like Africa may just force her to give it up after all. On returning to Australia, feeling like a foreigner in her homeland, Tammie unexpectedly lands a job at the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Sydney. There she meets Andy, a charismatic Brit, and Africa suddenly has a rival. But she's not ready to give up on the elephants yet ...

So begins an amazing journey across continents, to the places where elephants thrive and those where they're on the verge of extinction.

About The Author

Dr Tammie Matson is an Australian zoologist and author based in Sydney who specialises in human-wildlife conflict. Tammie has worked for over a decade to conserve African wildlife, including wild dogs, black rhinos and hippos, with a special focus on Namibia's threatened black-faced impala, the subject of her PhD and first non-fiction book, Dry Water – Diving Headfirst Into Africa. Since 2005 she has worked with local people to reduce human-elephant conflict in southern Africa and north-east India. Tammie is the scientific advisor and talent in a documentary on human-elephant conflict by Animal Media Australia. She is also an environmental consultant and spokesperson for WWF on threatened species conservation worldwide.