Kirsten Bond always knew she wanted to work in the wild. Fate would have it that she drew a rhino for a school art competition and won. The prize was to go to a wilderness school which served to confirm her dream of working with wild animals.

Through dogged determination she got a job in the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi park working on research on black rhino.

One day, while she was collecting dung samples from a boma, the rhino that was supposed to be held in a separate enclosure, suddenly appeared in front of her. It was alarmed and angry. Fortunately for Kirsten, she cannot remember what happened next. When two rangers bravely rescued her, her body was already broken and she's lost so much blood that she should have died. The doctors told her parents she would never walk again.

After 45 days she was discharged from hospital and began a slow and painful recovery. Eventually she went back to conservation, but in an office. It seemed that had dreams had been permanently dashed.

When Simon Morgan, a rhino behaviour expert offered to take her back into the bush, to meet her attacker she accepted without hesitation. The walk in to the rhino brought with it huge emotions.
How was she to confront something that had changed her life utterly?

For her this, the Ultimate Encounter, was like ,"getting back on the horse". This is a story of incredible determination and bravery about a person who has to face her fears and emotions by returning to a primal situation.

The following is Don Guy, the cameraman’s account of how the story, the “ULTIMATE ENCOUNTER” emerged.
His footage contributed to 66% of the final film.

Kirsten’s story emerged while I was covering the early stages of what became one of the greatest conservation projects to be run in Zululand in the last decade: The Black Rhino range expansion project. The WWF was a major sponsor of the effort to save the black rhino.

On one occasion, while I was filming the project, part of the WWF entourage that seemed to fall out of the sky, included a Australian-Germanic woman with a huge sense of importance and some leanings towards directing movies. Her suggestion was that she needed some glamour beyond the cowboy macho rhino men that seemed to dominate the frame. On the scene and included in our team was a shy attractive woman who she identified as a possible participant to glamour up the pic which the girl’s name was Kirsten Bond. My assistant and trainee Sphiwe Mazibuko had already caught her on camera as part of the general action. We would meet her further down the line tracking rhino, taking samples etc.

I was never to see her doing this work again because within a few weeks a rhino in the Mfolozi boma’s had gored her, where captive rhino are held before relocation. On the day of the attack, I was in Phinda game reserve with rangers looking at sites where the rhino would be released.
It was dreadful news made worse by the general perception (of doctors and her family) that she might not make it.

A year passed and Kirsten's story became her own private battle. I was surprised and encouraged to meet her a year later, when she bravely arrived back at Mfolozi at her own request in order to take a dung sample at the rhino capture operation. She was on crutches learning to walk and talk again.

I felt the idea of making a film about Kirsten was hot and that we should start shooting immediately. I contacted Simon Morgan; I knew Simon was the only guy who could track down the Tempe male. I had lots of stock with which we could build the story.

I arranged for Eddie Koch to meet Kirsten in Hluhluwe game reserve. We all agreed that we must help Kirsten meet her Rhino, - a desire she had to help her with her healing. I was to work with the director of the series Clifford Bestall. I knew Clifford’s name his reputation during the old hard news days in the 80's. I had been working for NBC and Dutch television and had seen his later film on the numbers gang, which had earned a huge international status. Working with him would be an experience. The rest is, as they say, history.

A home was found for the story... and that what was important.

DIRECTOR PROFILE: Clifford Bestall

Clifford is the only film director in the world to have won two prestigious Grierson Awards, the director’s prize for the best documentary screened on British television in any year. Other recognition of his work includes an Emmy nomination, a Rotterdam Prize, a Peabody award and a local Artes for one of the Ordinary People series he directed in 1993. He also won the Cameraman of the Year award by the Royal Photographic Society in 1988.