Page2 BATH TIMES Thursday September 13, 2007

JOY TO DESPAIR: A Bath woman's award has been lost by an airline – just a day after it was presented at a lavish ceremony.When Julika Kennaway picked up the award in South Africa, she was overjoyed.But her delight at receiving the accolade from TV presenter Michaela Strachan turned to despair when she discovered BA had lost it.

The 42-year-old from Bath won the first ever Roscar Award in the category of best newcomer at the Durban Wild Talk Africa international wildlife, travel and cultural film festival and conference. Ms Kennaway, a freelance  wildlife documentary film-maker, was presented with the sculpture of a rhinoceros after beating 114 other hopefuls with her 48-minute documentary, Daniel And Our Cats.

The film, which is due to be shown on the Discovery Channel in November, has been four years in the making and tells the story of Daniel Radziej who had a special bond with two leopards and a lion on an isolated farm in Namibia. Ms Kennaway’s win was poignant as during filming in 2004, she was involved in a car crash in Namibia in which Mr Radziej was killed and she was injured.

The awards were presented for the first time this year to celebrate travel, natural history and cultural films. Ms Kennaway, who divides her time between Cape Town and Bath, had carefully packed the statuette in bubblewrap before putting it into her luggage for her overnight flight with BA to Britain. However her case failed to appear when she landed at London’s Heathrow airport last Friday . She had to pack the award in her hold luggage because she was carrying her camera and computer as hand luggage. She is also without all her toiletries, best clothes and computer power cable which were all packed in the case with the award. Bizarrely, the bag was discovered last Sunday but ended up being flown to Johannesburg where it has disappeared. “It is just a crazy situation,” said Ms Kennaway. “I was flown out just for the award and the award was lost. I was devastated. “I spent three hours at the airport waiting for the next flight to come  n and it was not there either. “I have been on to BA. The bag arrived on Sunday and then was flown back to Johannesburg for some inexplicable reason. They can’t explain it. “It should have turned up within 24 hours of landing which is what BA reassured me of.”

Ms Kennaway said she has struggled to get through to someone at the airline and that when she had used a friend’s computer to log onto the firm’s website to check progress on tracking her luggage, no information had been available. Attempts are currently being made to try to trace the bag in Johannesburg and fly it back to London. Ms Kennaway said she was beginning to fear the worst. “Potentially the award could be stolen because it is a beautiful sculpture – That is my first fear. “My second fear is if I did get it back it  could be broken from all this travelling back and forth. “My greatest fear, however, is that the bag is lost forever.” A spokeswoman for BA said: “We apologise to Ms Kennaway for the delay to her baggage and for any distress caused. “We continue to make every effort to return the luggage to Ms Kennaway as soon as possible. “Our customer relations team is looking into this case and will directly contact Ms Kennaway as soon as possible.”