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. She is currently working on a new manuscript that traces railway journeys through Siberia and Central Asia, weaving her personal history into the broader narrative. The Lion Behind the Anthill is her second book. Her first book, The Hong Kong Letters, was published in Melbourne and Hong Kong in 2019.