[1] She had previously worked as an artistic director for an Australian amateur theatre company, the Shopfront Theater for Young People, for which she also wrote and directed performances.
[1] In 1999, Henkel wrote and directed Walking Through a Minefield (1999) which documented the blockade of the proposed Jabiluka uranium mine in Australia's Northern Territory.
In 2003, Henkel wrote and directed her first TV documentary for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation entitled The man who stole my mother's face.
Henkel was the writer and director of both projects, which involved extensive travel and documentation of the expanding palm oil plantations of Indonesia and their social and environmental impacts.
[14] She had unintentionally introduced Harris to one of his victims, 13-year-old Tonya Lee in 1986 when Henkel was artistic director of an Australian theatre group, Shopfront Theater for Young People, on tour in the United Kingdom.
Through a subsequent Virgo Productions partnership with Microsoft,[15] the project developed into something she described as "too good to be true" as it focussed on engaging school students around the world.
The chosen group of young people would ultimately spend 100 days in the jungle of Borneo with the Dayaks, learning about the expansion of the palm oil industry and its environmental and cultural impacts.
In 1992 the pair launched Hatchling Films[17] and went on to release Walking through a minefield (1999) which followed the Australian anti-nuclear movement's response to the proposal to mine uranium at Jabiluka in Kakadu National Park.
[18] Later collaborations include The Burning Season (2008), I told you I was ill: The Life and Legacy of Spike Milligan (2005), The man who stole my mother's face (2003) and many other films.
[17] He launched a new production company entitled Green Turtle Films and embarked on his first project without Henkel, the feature-length documentary Two Degrees (2013).