Gone bush

Kiwi Jane Wynyard left the rarefied air of high-fashion PR in London to publicise the plight of African elephants.

- LOUISE CHUNN

Jane Wynyard moves around a lot. When we speak, she is in Nairobi checking in with the Save the Elephants charity. On another day, I might have caught her in the wilderness of Samburu, a seven-hour drive north of the Kenyan capital, surrounded by elephants, impalas, giraffes, cheetahs and hyenas. She works in a research camp there, taking photographs and working as a communications consultant.

Her bush lodgings in Samburu are basic: there's a bucket shower - the water heated by the sun in a jerry can - and a pit toilet. But she's often on the road, travelling from Kenya to Namibia or Uganda, or anywhere she is wanted to tell the story of what is happening to African wildlife and appealing to the world for their help.

Although Africa is a long way from Auckland, where Wynyard, 54, spent most of her childhood, it's even further from the glitzy world she inhabited until seven years ago.

She moved to London in her early 30s, and quickly became head of communications for Hearst Magazines, publisher of Harper's Bazaar and Elle among others, so there was always an awards dinner or power breakfast to keep her in corporate fettle. Then she moved to Net-a-Porter, at the time the most ultra-fashionable online boutique in the world. As global head of public relations, publishing and media, she led a very high-end existence, working with brand-name photographers and stylists, featuring luxurious labels, with almost constant travel and entertainment always on expenses. She spent many weekends riding horses in Hampshire, or flying to Morocco to go surfing. Yet, somehow the luxury lifestyle "just didn't feel like me".

She suspects she might have still been jumping in and out of black cabs if life hadn't hit her right in the guts. Her beloved stepbrother, Marc, was suddenly dead at 52, given just six weeks' notice of the cancer that would kill him.