Adelaide filmmaker’s Back to the Bush follows 10 years of rare native animals returning to the wild

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A filmmaker based a little outside Adelaide has spent a decade following the return of native animals to a remote corner of Western Australia, and his documentary Back to the Bush has now premiered internationally.

Brad Leue, who was born and raised in South Australia, made the film for Australian Wildlife Conservancy. It has been chosen for the third annual Wildlife Conservation Film Festival, an international event for films on conservation, the environment and wildlife preservation.

Back to the Bush follows ecologists from the conservancy over 10 years as they rebuild native animal populations at Mt Gibson Wildlife Sanctuary, in the remote Wheatbelt of Western Australia.

Across 21 minutes, the film goes behind the scenes of a rewilding effort that, the conservancy says, has helped to set a benchmark for reintroductions around the country.

It shows banded hare-wallabies and Shark Bay bandicoots returning, two species once extinct on mainland Australia. Greater bilbies, numbats, brushtail possums and chuditch, also known as western quolls, are back as well, after almost a century away from the Wheatbelt.

“It’s been an absolute honour to work on this project and to have the opportunity to share it with an international audience through the Wildlife Conservation Film Festival,” Brad said.

“The reintroduction program at Australian Wildlife Conservancy’s Mt Gibson Wildlife Sanctuary is such a success story for conservation in Australia, not only for what has been achieved at the sanctuary itself, but also because it’s now serving as a source site for other reintroductions around the country.”

“For someone like me, who is energised by the natural world, visiting the sanctuary feels like Christmas,” said Brad.

“It’s one of those rare places where you can still experience a glimpse of how Australia once was, with thriving wildlife and healthy, intact habitat.”

Brad is an award-winning photographer and videographer who works in natural history. He has also filmed the reintroduction of critically endangered species, floodwaters moving into the South Australian desert and fire management in the Kimberley in Western Australia.

The conservancy says what has worked at Mt Gibson gives it a blueprint for future reintroduction projects, at its other sanctuaries and elsewhere.

The film is now open for anyone to watch online as part of the festival. It’s streaming on Ecoflix, with a selection of other finalists, until December 31.

Back to the Bush – Hope and restoration at Mt Gibson Wildlife Sanctuary
When: Streaming until December 31, 2026
Where: Ecoflix
For more information, click here.

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