wildlife conservation

Interview from Christian the Lion's Former Owners!

Rendall and Bourke are silver-haired now. With scarves knotted loosely around their necks, they spoke from beneath the soaring arch of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, delighted to talk about a story that’s at once 39 years old and forever new.

“It is pretty extraordinary footage and quite humbling. But it is sort of very beautiful, the response,” Bourke told Vieira. “I suppose, 35 years later, to find that people are so fascinated by it and have so enjoyed it, is slightly overwhelming … and all the comments on the YouTube site, they’re so positive. It is marvelous that so many people are getting so much enjoyment out of it.”

They retold the story of going to London's Harrods department store in 1969 out of curiosity. A friend had told them she had asked the manager of the exotic animal department if she could buy a camel, and with classic British aplomb, he had dryly asked, “Would that be one hump or two, ma’am?” The two young men, who had grown up in Australia and recently graduated from college, were keen to see such a place.

At the store, they spotted a 35-pound lion cub in a little cage. Like kids enthralled by a puppy in a pet store window, they had to have him.

“It was an irresistible sight,” Rendall said. “We were rather shocked when we saw this cub in Harrods in a department store in a very small cage. Not only was he totally entrancing, we must be able to do something better for him. He can’t stay in a cage this size,” he remembers thinking.

They named him Christian and took him home to their pad in the Kings Road, the hippest address in the hippest part of London — Chelsea.

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“We had such a beautiful relationship with him,” Bourke said. “There was such trust between
Christian's former owners had been told the lion wouldn't recognize them. But the video shows the lion's obvious joy at being reunited with the two men. He ran toward us with such love and excitement in his eyes, and we felt exactly the same way. We were just so excited to see him, looking so big and healthy. The story had just turned out so beautifully, when it could have had a very different ending.”

Rendall referred to the film in describing the reunion. “You can see in that clip his body language,” he said. “When he first starts seeing us, he’s looking, looking. Is it us? Is it us? And then suddenly, he says, ‘Right, this is them.’ And down he comes. And there wasn’t a moment that we ever doubted that it was going to be a wonderful greeting … we never doubted it.”

Bourke and Rendall saw Christian a final time in 1974, by which time he had doubled in size and was now king of the jungle, with a pride of lionesses and a batch of cubs.

“He still recognized us,” Rendall said. “He was with wild lionesses. He had a litter of cubs and his genes had been passed on back into the wild. After that time we saw him, he was never seen again. It was like a final farewell … he was completely integrated back into the wild.”

The experience moved Rendall, who lives in London, to devote his life to conservation; today he is a trustee of the Adamson Trust. Bourke, who became a dealer in Aboriginal art in his native Australia, is also a supporter of preserving wildlife.

Both hope that the millions of people who have been so moved by the clip contribute to the cause.

“We’re just hoping that people who have enjoyed this clip — it’s a phenomenal number — if they would want to contact the George Adamson Trust through www.wildlifenow.com and support us and support conservation, it would be wonderful to contribute to George’s memory,” Rendall said.



I took a lot of the story out, please go read the whole thing! Rendall and Bourke are silver-haired now. With scarves knotted loosely around their necks, they spoke from beneath the soaring arch of... more

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