Asher Keddie - freedom fighter for Romania's majestic brown bears

THE plight of Romanian bears in captivity would move the hardest heart. For Asher Keddie, first-hand experience rocked her world.

Asher Keddie

I LOVE how she slams the vodka shot, sucking that Romanian poison back and wincing with every wave of its rabid mule kick. I am impressed enough that she makes it to dinner after travelling 36 hours to Bucharest on the kind of pupil-popping, long-haul flight that has you twitching with airport lounge hallucinations and hurling abuse at wall clocks.

You get into post-communist Bucharest and all those Bourne Identity faces seem to zero in on you, cold and dark-browed men with black moustaches; white and grey concrete and women sitting in cars with cupped hands in black gloves, every single one of them with gold crucifix necklaces and shifty eyes like they're rendezvousing in illicit love affairs. You finally walk into your room in the hotel and stare into the bathroom mirror, rubbing the dark purple bags under your eyes as you say: Thank God.

Asher Keddie doesn't even shower. She drops her bags in her room and shoots straight down to dinner because she thinks it is important we all meet before we see the bears. Nine of us are at the table - two journalists, two cinematographers, one producer, one London photographer, two members of the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) and their ambassador, the most natural actress to come out of Australia since Cate Blanchett.

She tells the London photographer about her work: her role in the hit series Offspring; her unforgettable take on Ita Buttrose in Paper Giants. It is bizarre watching her describe things fixed in your pop-cultural DNA, like watching Tom Cruise explain Top Gun's plot to an interested Eskimo.

Then she speaks about her best friend, Hobbes, a deeply loyal Labrador who died in August last year after a 16-year bond that was as rich and rewarding and complex as any she'd had with another living being. In the photos folder on her laptop she has a series of photos of Hobbes in his last hour. Every time her eyes pass them she looks away, clicks off the computer screen. Some other time. Or never.

She speaks about the crippled racehorses she rehabilitated on her property in Victoria. And we speak about the majestic brown bears of Romania, the mighty Ursus arctos, and how there are 6000 in the country, 350 of which can be legally shot each year, and how much of their recent history in this dark green forested fairytale land has been associated with rusty cages on wet concrete floors or standing upright in frilly pink skirts pushing bicycles.

Countless bears captured and bred from birth for zoos and circuses, being laughed at by people who just might try the brown bear dish on the menu at their local restaurant because it's not too bad at all and tastes a bit like beef.

She speaks like a vet scientist. She seems to know everything there is to know about the bears. And I am relieved. Because I was worried this was one of those worthy yet kinda horseshit actor-with-a- conscience life quests but, you know, if I must travel to a wondrous location to document the efforts of a rescue team from the WSPA then I'm not complaining.

But I love the way she slams the vodka shot, a complementary and traditional dinner drink in this particular Bucharest quarter, on this particular night. I love the way she grips the glass between her thumb and forefinger and says, "To the bears", and slams that vicious paint stripper down her throat and shakes her head three times and laughs. There. Right there, something in those eyes. Something true.

She bangs the shot glass triumphantly down on the table and I'm in. I'm in 100 per cent. I want to see the bears.

I don't want to see the bears. See them like this, padding through their own filth, two bears pacing around in circles inside a rusted black metal cage the size of a tool shed, walking like lobotomised mental patients in some Victorian London back-alley freak show. Bent bars, torn and hacked. Mighty adult bears the age of 15 acting like babies. The smell of old and new shit the most prominent aroma to occupy their senses. They've grown up in a wet cement hole adjoined to a cage holding two lions, two powerhouse creatures that can reach speeds of 60km/h, walking in circles around a hole in a block of cement filled with dirt and water and lumps of faeces.

A mother lion grips her cub in her mouth, drags it out for the people, for her masters. Work brings freedom. Work brings food. The lion cub is so malnourished it looks like a cross between a baby lion and a chihuahua. And next to these lions is a cage filled with a male adult lion so mighty and proud even as he rests on a wobbly wooden table with his right paw three inches from a pile of his own flyblown droppings. A local woman leans over to the lion, sticks her hand out, waving it trance-like, apparently trying to hypnotise the great beast. When he snarls she laughs, cackles at the fact he still has some life left in him.

Onesti Zoo in eastern Romania, three hours' drive from Bucharest, is surrounded by a rusty fence and barbed wire. There are mini zoos like this throughout the country. Low-key operations, four or five cages stuffed with animals, drawing punters off the street. This is a delicate mission. Victor Watkins, a pioneering bear advocate from WSPA, and Liviu Cioineag, manager of the Zarnesti Bear Sanctuary 95km from here, have spent two years negotiating with the Onesti Zoo owner to relocate three brother bears to the sanctuary, which is funded by WSPA. They rescued two brothers yesterday and they've come today for the third, our "rescue bear".

The zoo owner greets the 20-strong WSPA team at the barbed-wire gate. A large man wearing a green feathered hunting hat and coat, he is presented with a koala toy from Australia as a peace offering. If the team wants to rescue other animals in the zoo it's important the owner is allowed to save face. He must be seen as the benevolent animal lover and not as the man who kept the three bears in a cage for eight years since they were babies dropped at his gate in a box.

Asher fits into the plan well. Important Australian actress thanks compassionate Romanian zoo owner. Smile for the cameras. Bears live happily ever after. Easier said than done. The zoo owner hugs the toy koala, speaks a few words in Romanian while pointing to his heart. "He says he loves the koala bear," his son translates. "He wants to give it a cage. He likes them very much."

The zoo owner calls Asher over to the cage holding two 15-year-old bears. He feeds them some bread and smiles for the cameras. Then he instructs Asher to hand the bears some bread. She walks tentatively to the cage, feeds the bears with the same skill she would feed her horses. She's given an open jar of honey. The bears stand on their feet and grip the bars with their paws, their long pink tongues digging into the honey. The bears slurp so desperately, they look like babies sucking down a bottle of formula. There's something deeply saddening in their groans; something hopeless. These bears aren't leaving today. They could die in this cage.

The zoo owner and his workers give loud guffaws at the scene. Asher gives a half-smile. A brave face for all. The seasoned actor. Decades of stage experience, mixing with the best at the Melbourne Theatre Company, mastering her beloved Chekhov, bringing Blanche D'Alpuget to life on screen. But Olivier couldn't pull this off. Something in those eyes. She's dying inside.

When Asher was four years old she welcomed home her first pet, a fluffy white rabbit named Flossy. She was an independent child; she had already informed her mother, Robi, that her services to the braiding of her hair would no longer be required. And she alone would love Flossy, love her heart and soul. Then one brisk winter morning she skipped out to Flossy's cage to find the rabbit still. She pulled Flossy from the cage and held her in her hands. A lump of lifelessness she would recall for the next 34 years.

Flossy had frozen to death. In that moment, Asher Keddie experienced empathy for the first time. Empathy, the most useful tool in the actor's emotional arsenal. And in that moment, she was struck with a clear and unmistakable thought. Flossy didn't need her love and adoration. She needed her care.

While a small crowd of cameras and visitors gather around the blustery zoo owner, Asher slips off discreetly towards the zoo gate. Her trembling left hand reaches for the gate handle. It looks like she might vomit. "I just have to get out of here for a second," she whispers. In a grassy clearing outside the zoo she takes three long breaths. "I'm in shock," she says. "It's all of them, the bears, the tigers, the lions."

She grips her belly. She looks ill. She sounds ill. "Aaaaah," she says. "I can't f..king believe it. I can't. Just ... aaahhhh ... I don't think I've felt that kind of ... ache ... physically for animals before. We have to leave them ... you know ... " And her aching is released in tears. She cups her mouth and tears fall from her face, rush forth no matter how hard she tries to build an emotional levee. "Just feeding the honey to the two older bears ... these majestic animals." She wipes her eyes. A WSPA representative softly approaches.

"Would you like to see the rescue?" she asks Asher. "I can't," she says. "I've seen enough."

Luring a rescue bear from a zoo cage into a transport cage is a devious and jarring process. European brown bears have learnt to be wary of men carrying meaty baits. For 20 minutes our rescue bear leans into the transport cage licking up lures of honey drops and chunks of red meat, without letting its back feet leave the cage he's called home for eight years. But it leans further and further into the cage, licking swirls of honey, until, at last, it absent-mindedly lifts its hind legs inside and the transport cage door slams shut. Frightened, the bear darts back and forth in the new cage, growling and groaning; primal howls. It is now that Asher returns, sits down at his level at the head of the cage and opens a jar of honey. "Hello mate," she says. And she soothes the harried giant. Calms it with a jar of Australian honey and a gentle "sssshhhh". His tongue spills honey over her hand and the bear groans, almost appreciatively. Asher didn't want to come back inside the zoo. The bear brought her back.

Thirty minutes later, the transport van pulls out of the zoo gates carrying the bear to a freedom it's never known. The proud lion in the third cage down watches it drive away, turning left and disappearing from the view of the gate and the long wire fence and the two or three outside trees that constitute the lion's known universe. He blinks, keeping his eyes on the gates. Ten seconds later, he blinks again.

"And the woodcutter burst into the cottage, rescuing Little Red Riding Hood from the clutches of the wolf. But
the woodcutter wisely understood the needs of wild animals. And he let the wolf escape through the front door of the cottage, before sitting Little Red Riding Hood down and explaining to her the dangers of humans encroachingon the natural habitats of big bad wolves ... "

Cristina Lapis claps her hands, chuckling in the wooden dining hall at the heart of the bear sanctuary that she built deep in an oak and hazel forest in Zarnesti, a small town in Romania's Transylvania region, three hours' drive from Bucharest. "I would insist to my classmates, 'The wolf lives, the wolf goes free!'" she says. "Well, that's how I told it, anyway." Cristina is married to Roger Lapis, the French consul to Romania. Her voice mixes French with her Romanian hometown, Brasov. Her manner is equal parts Sophia Loren cool and Willy Wonka aloof.

Directly below us, Asher films a documentary she's shooting about her travels to Romania. Cristina looks out to the sanctuary. Breathes it in. Sixty-nine hectares of forest and meadowland bordered and divided by 15km of electrified wire fence, home to 67 bears rescued from mini roadside zoos and restaurant cages where they were used to entertain guests.

"Maya built this," Cristina says. Maya was a caged roadside restaurant entertainment bear who became well known to tourists travelling through Transylvania to visit Bran Castle, the gothic marvel locals say inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula. In 2001, Maya made national headlines when, suffering from a severe stress disorder due to captivity and constant interaction with humans, she began self-mutilating, eating her right paw and sucking up her own blood. Maya's selfmutilation prompted the Romanian people to rethink the way they were treating brown bears.

Cristina had already created a sanctuary for at-risk dogs in Transylvania and she welcomed Maya into it. "We operated three times on her," she says. "But she ate further and further, the right paw and then the left." She cries. "We had to euthanase her. I promised her. I said, 'I let you go, but I promise you I will never, never see another bear die like this.' And that was when I decided to give my life to the bears."

Cristina walks down to the bear enclosure where Asher is shooting takes for her documentary. They link arms as they watch two bears playing in a pool of water, having been rescued from an old bird cage in the back of a bread factory. Cristina is visibly taken by Asher's passion, by her knowledge. She stands back and watches Asher interact with the animals, how she leans her head when they lean their heads, how she moves in and out with the bears, crouches down into dirt if she has to. Cristina clutches my forearm urgently and whispers: "In every creature there is a presence that awakens what is the most tender in ourselves and others. Look into their eyes. In the eyyyyyes."

That night, on the bus back to our hotel in Brasov, Asher shows me a portrait her artist boyfriend Vincent Fantauzzo painted of her on the day they met, around six months ago. The previous December, Asher's five-year marriage had ended on good terms. Vincent didn't know her personally. But he had set himself a project to paint 30 portraits in 30 days. He wanted Asher Keddie as one of the 30. It's a remarkable portrait. Photographic in detail. Every crease in her half smile, every strand of hair. And something deeper. "Vincent is a master at looking behind the eyes," she says.

The rescue trip lasts 10 days. The days are as exhilarating as they are shocking and taxing. Asher constantly checks in on the "rescue bear", quarantined below the sanctuary headquarters. She sits in a room with the sedated bear when it is castrated, as per sanctuary policy. She puts her hand against its paw, winces when the vets pull the bear's testicles away. She films fundraising ads for WSPA in freezing snow, does take after take in a thin shirt for continuity reasons, not stopping till she's nailed her monologue. "Unless it's at a level of challenge that I find almost uncomfortable, it's not satisfying for me," she says. "That can prove tricky in life, particularly in relationships, but it's just who I am."

By night, everybody blows off steam. We play a bar game where players reveal their most embarrassing physical flaw. I show Asher the evolutionary anomaly that is the third row of teeth that began and mercifully stopped growing beneath my lower gums. She gasps in hands-over-eyes horror, which, for a woman who has witnessed a bear castration, is quite the reaction. In accordance with game rules, she tells me she had a speech impediment as a child.

It's on the seventh day of the trip that Cristina peers into the quarantine room and says to our rescue bear: "Yes, my dear, you will go out." She marches upstairs and instructs her team like a military general. "We release this bear, now." Asher and the WSPA crew spring with jubilation. The place erupts with a flurry of movement as staff run through safety procedures, prepare food and ready the bear for release. "I always bring the excitement," Cristina says.

Asher stands at a viewing window just above the release door of the quarantine room leading out into the bear sanctuary. About 12 bears close to the building can sense the commotion. They lumber near the door, sit themselves down like theatre guests.

While staff buzz about, Cristina slips off to a quiet room upstairs and grips a card showing an image of St George the dragon slayer. She prays for a seamless transition from cage to forest, from captivity to freedom. And she continues praying as ground staff open the release door of the quarantine room.

Asher leans out the window, staring down at the door. After 20 minutes, she sees the bear's head pop out. "Oh my God," she whispers. After 40 minutes, she watches the bear reach out to grab an apple that has been left for him on the forest floor. "Oh my God." And after 50 minutes, she watches that rescue bear, who spent eight years walking in circles inside a cage the size of a camping tent, take its first steps to freedom. Asher's eyes well with tears and the bear discovers for the first time in his life what it feels like to walk on grass.

It's on the last day of the trip that Asher looks at her photos of Hobbes the dog. She's in the back of a van on the way back to Bucharest. She clicks on the photos accidentally, but today she doesn't click away. She looks at the images. Dwells on them, studies them to the point that she wants to break down in tears in front of everyone.

Hobbes had 16 hectares of fertile grass to roam on the farm but his favourite spot was a patch of grass by the back door of the farmhouse, where, from every conceivable angle, he could see that Asher was safe. This is where he was put to sleep. In the last hour of his life, Asher spooned Hobbes, held him closer than ever before in the moment she let him go.

Back in Bucharest that night, we share a quiet drink in the lobby of the hotel before dinner. About five minutes into our chat she says this: "You have a choice to detach when you're hit with depth. You also have the choice to dive in. I had to make a choice to move forward in a lot of ways in my life in the last year. And make some very tough choices for myself. And one of those choices was letting Hobbes go. He was such a big slice of the past for me. It was a profound letting go. His passing was the beginning of very big change for me last year. Very complex.

"Letting go is becoming a big thing for me, for some reason. I'm more at peace now with the letting go of things. I don't know why I'm mentioning that, but I think it's the letting go that I'm learning more than ever in life. Whether it's a relationship, whether it's work, whatever it is ... it's getting easier to let go. With Hobbesy, I really didn't want to let go. I literally had not stopped working for about three and a half years, jumping from one thing to another. It was, like, 'God, I can't even stand the sight of my face anymore', you know. Do everyone a favour and go and sit on the farm for four months. Saturation is a terrible thing. But funnily enough, my best mate of 16 years, I feel, almost hung on until I stopped. And I stopped working in May and I had the most fabulous couple of months with him on the farm. And he, all of a sudden, said that was enough."

She cries at this, rubs her eyes. "And of all the profound moments one experiences in life, that was the most poignant and the most special. That last moment when he went to sleep. It's not an easy thing to do, to force that situation along. But it was the right thing to do. It was the responsible thing to do. And he asked me to do it. And that was the beginning of a very transformative year in my life. The letting go of him."

She sips her wine, shakes away her tears. "It's been a big year and a really difficult year, but a very positive one, too. I think I've opened myself up enough now to, you know, feel ready enough to take another leap. And maybe that's what this is part of. You know those moments, when you're ready to take a running leap?" She smiles, nodding her head. Something alights in her eyes. Something true. And there, right there, this actor awakens something tender inside me. I don't know what it is but I want to kiss my wife immediately. I want to hug my kids forever. And I want to get a dog.

www.bricksforbears.org.au

Trent Dalton travelled to Romania courtesy of WSPA