by Bob Irwin
But I needn’t have worried: the owners agreed, and actually had quite a laugh about it. In fact, once word got out around town a bit of a crowd formed. I suppose not many people would stop to give a couple of gnarly crocodiles some leisure time in the bath.
So the crocodiles cooled down in their laundry tubs. We spent the entire day rotating the crocs in and out of the water, and watching them closely to make sure they didn’t wander off. Their mouths weren’t tied up, and these five-foot crocodiles were capable of doing a fair bit of damage to our vulnerable hands beneath the water. Crocodiles are basically one big muscle, incredibly strong. But I didn’t like the idea of tying their jaws closed for such long distances. If they’d just eaten when they were caught they may have wanted to vomit, and with their jaws tied I was concerned they might have choked. But I was also worried because I’d learnt my lesson before.
Some time previously, I’d been driving home from Cooktown when I became stranded between some flooded creeks. I was relocating animals needing a new home after a small zoo had closed down. On the back of my trailer were some agile wallabies, a brolga and a fair few big freshwater crocodiles, all in timber boxes I had made for their transport back to Beerwah. For my benefit, the crocodiles had their mouths taped closed to make it easier to manoeuvre them in and out of their crates.
I had been stuck for five long days on the other side of the river and was desperate to get these animals to their new home when another driver offered to tow me through the flooded river. But his engine stalled as we crossed, with me attached by a cable behind him and stuck in the floodwaters too. That was a nail-biting situation, but I finally got the truck out with the help of a couple of other people and headed for home.
It wasn’t until I was partway there that I realised I had lost one of the crocodiles out of the crate while the trailer was in the water. I immediately felt sickened as I realised the crocodile’s mouth was still tied up. I just hoped like hell that the tape would eventually come loose, and he’d be able to survive that.
That sort of guilt never leaves your memory, and probably for good reason: so you never ever make that same mistake again. I vowed never again to travel with crocodiles with their jaws taped up, no matter how difficult that made matters for me. I’d prefer to be bitten than know that they’d come to any harm because of my interference.
But this time, our freshies all got back to the park, cool and safe and sound. They went straight into their enclosure, where I fussed over them for days, proud as punch.
With these new freshies, all the other animals we’d sourced, and all the injured wildlife locals had brought to us, the park had quickly grown far too big for us to manage on our own. And with money still very tight we couldn’t afford to employ any staff. But help soon came as Lyn’s parents relocated to the Sunshine Coast from Melbourne. It was a wonderful time: we all got along like a house on fire and they loved their new Queensland lifestyle. And they became a huge help to us around the park.
Nanna was able to help Lyn with everything from raising the creatures she had in her care to looking after the kids. Pa was an exceptionally kind man with a vigorous work ethic, despite his war injury. He started working with me a few days a week, assisting with many of the maintenance jobs. And after already saving my bacon once before, he soon saved my life again.
On that particular morning, I had been doing the rounds, feeding the crocs, when all of a sudden I was looking at a large freshwater crocodile clamped onto my bloody arm; I could see the croc’s bottom teeth coming up through the skin from below. The croc in question was Old Man Freshie—a resident of our reptile park—who was clearly keen to defy the reputation freshwater crocs have for even-tempered dispositions. To be fair, this fellow had every reason for holding a grudge: he had two bullets lodged beneath his skin from an encounter with hunters and it was clear that he’d never forgotten.
I had been cleaning out Old Man Freshie’s pond, which he shared with a couple of females. Old Man Freshie was the largest of them, over three metres in length. Freshwater crocodiles don’t get much bigger than that. He was aggressive whenever I had to go into his enclosure—to mow the lawn around his waterhole, for example. But on this particular day he had succeeded at something he had long wanted to do—try and eat me.
I must have taken my eyes off him just long enough for him to get too close. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye I saw him launching out of the water, aiming for my head. I raised my arm to block him and he took hold of that instead. Then he tried to pull me into a death roll. All I could do to stop that from happening was to hold him between my thighs, with my legs like scissors. But I was now stuck: I had no available limbs left to do anything else with. If he’d managed that death roll, it would have cost me my hand. And I was quite attached to my hand.
Thankfully Pa was close by, and I could see him run to my aid. Pa always carried a towel on hot days to wipe away sweat. As he entered the enclosure, I talked him through how he could free me from the jaws of this crocodile. Pa carefully worked the towel into Old Man Freshie’s jaw as I pushed his bottom jaw down with my free hand, and I managed to finally pry my arm free. Pa and I then moved like the clappers to get out of Old Man Freshie’s way.
My arm was bleeding profusely from a gaping hole. We bandaged it up to stem the blood loss and made for the hospital, where the surgeon checked me over. ‘How’d you get all of those holes in your feet?’ he asked me.
‘I don’t have any holes in my feet!’ I replied, puzzled.
Slightly amused, he pointed to my feet and said, ‘Well, I’m telling you there are holes all over your feet, and they’re going to need repairing too.’
We worked out that while the big guy had me bailed up in the pond, the smaller females in the enclosure had been chewing on my feet and I hadn’t even realised because the pain in my arm was so intense.
I was more cautious around Old Man Freshie after that. A lot of people thought I should shoot him. But it wasn’t his fault at all, I couldn’t blame him. I had clearly lost my concentration, and in that kind of environment you simply can’t afford to do that.
Well, I guess I learnt the hard way. I was out of action for a long time after that. It took many months of physiotherapy to get the hand functioning again, because Old Man Freshie had devoured vital working parts. But I was extremely thankful to have had Pa on hand that day—to save my own. Pa had proven yet again that he most certainly was worth his weight in gold.
***
Steve was one of those kids who needed to be constantly physically tested. Playing sport was one way of channelling some of that restless energy—he seemed to have far more of it than any person of his age required. So he started playing cricket on the weekends. At one match, while under the supervision of his school sports teacher, he was growing impatient on the sidelines, waiting to be called up to bat. But Steve didn’t do waiting all that well. So he decided to wander off instead and catch himself a few red-bellied black snakes. Seven, to be precise.
He pulled out one after another from the knee-high grass clumps in a swampy area in a nearby paddock; they were all between one and two metres long. These stunning serpents are distinctive for the crimson scales on the underside of their shiny jet-black bodies and their short, stubby heads. But they are also renowned for their potent venom. When approached, the red-bellied black snake will often freeze to try to avoid detection, making it an easy target for a silly boy to catch; this day that silly boy was my own son, embarrassingly enough. A fiercely shy snake by nature, it will generally only deliver a serious bite after severe provocation.
As Steve had no catching bag, one of his good friends and partner in crime, improvised, emptying the bus driver’s esky onto the grass and handing it to Steve. As their engrossed teammates looked on, Steve wrangled each annoyed snake into the esky, before replacing the seal-tight lid and proudly carrying it onto the bus. The bus driver was less impressed: when he caught wind of the fact that Steve had not only redeployed his own esk
y as a catching bag but had also brought venomous snakes onto his bus, he floored it all the way back to the reptile park.
I was surprised to see an irate bus driver standing beside Steve at the front of the park. ‘Your foolish son has caught red-bellied black snakes and put them in my esky!’ he shouted angrily at me.
I looked at Steve. He was beaming and proudly presented me with the esky, excited to bring me his live gifts. But his smile disappeared when he saw my fury. I’m not afraid to admit that I kicked him up the backside before leading him by his elbow straight down to the house, where I had very stern words with him about risking his life and that of everyone else on that bus by doing something as senseless as that. ‘You’re an absolute bloody turkey!’ I said, a name that I’d become accustomed to calling him whenever he got into mischief. Needless to say, the name ‘Turkey’ became a common word in our household. It became his lifelong nickname.
Once again he had got caught up in his less-than-normal upbringing, and had forgotten about the possible consequences when dealing with such dangerous animals. The funny thing was, that kid wasn’t scared of the red-bellied black snakes whatsoever. But he was terrified of me, stunned by my furious reaction.
I realised that his adventurous spirit would always draw him towards these dangerous situations. I’d long known that he had tons of curiosity and wanted to experiment, which also got him into continual strife with animals. After the events of that day, and the brown-snake incident, I realised it was inevitable that he’d always be finding and handling snakes, and that I wouldn’t be able to watch him every minute. I decided that, even though he was just twelve years old, it was time to teach him proper care and safety out in the field with me where he could learn and maybe expend some of that energy under my watchful supervision. Until now he hadn’t had a great deal of experience with large venomous snakes, just his few highly dangerous dabbles. I couldn’t just tell him how, I had to show him—he wanted to experience everything for himself. I knew that was the only way a boy like him was going to learn.
So I took him on his first trip out to Windorah, on the black soil plains of central Queensland, together with Peter. It was a long drive from home, almost fifteen hours nonstop, and it was difficult to keep Steve occupied for that length of time. Windorah is spectacular: vast plains dramatically butt up against rocky volcanic escarpments. I’d get this incredible feeling when I was up high on those escarpments: I’d look out towards the northwest and there’d be nothing, just an open expanse, for about forty kilometres. To many people it might’ve seemed a featureless landscape, but it was like a playground for Peter, Steve and me: a huge sandpit for us to scratch around in.
In the distinctive red sandy hills, you could easily see the snake tracks left in the sand. I knew there were plenty of reptiles here and with a huge diversity of isolated habitats to explore, you never knew what you were going to find. Wandering around one day, we discovered areas in the escarpment country where the Indigenous people had lived in ancient times—we found signs of where they’d made their tools and where they’d camped. It was a fascinating place that never disappointed; all we’d do is walk around during the day, or drive around at night, looking for whatever we could find.
One day, Steve and I were walking through a gully lined with clumps of dry, sparse grasses when we saw a beautiful big eastern brown snake. It was doing its thing, moving about in the tussocks of grass, searching for mice by testing the air with its tongue, flicking it out and getting scents of nearby animals back on its receptors.
‘Let’s just follow him around for a while,’ I whispered to Steve, keeping our distance. I wanted Steve to learn how the snake lived, what he preyed on, and the environment he moved about in. We’d been doing this for quite a while when all of a sudden the snake wheeled around and started coming directly for us. Instead of slowly backing away and getting out of its path, I said to Steve, as softly but urgently as I could, ‘Just stand still. No matter what that snake does, don’t move at all.’
I was confident that it was time for him to learn more about snakes in the wild, in a situation where I could be there to guide him and step in if anything went wrong. I knew firsthand that if he could experience something profound then it would never leave him. Steve was similar to me in that he was a better student out in the field than sitting in a classroom. But still my heart was in my mouth as the snake, unpredictably, slithered right up to Steve’s feet. I watched on, immobile, as it flicked its tongue on his bare legs, testing if he was edible.
I realised we had passed the point at which I could have stepped in. I suddenly thought I might have made a terrible mistake; if Steve had become spooked by the snake or made a shift in any direction, that snake would have bitten him. And I was also all too aware that Steve found it hard to keep still for any period of time. I just hoped like hell that he wouldn’t move a muscle.
In the end, that snake merely enquired about him and then, realising that Steve didn’t smell like a mouse or a lizard, went back to doing his own thing, completely unfazed. Meanwhile Steve’s eyes were nearly popping out of their sockets. He was in absolute wonderment at how close that snake had been to him. I looked at Steve’s face and I thought to myself, How good was that? I knew he had felt something powerful. He had been so confident, just exactly as he needed to be, because in the animal kingdom there’s no grey area when it comes to fight or flight: you either run at the speed of light, or you don’t move at all.
As he bounded around the campfire that night, he was thrilled. He just wouldn’t shut up about that experience. It was unbelievable, the spectrum of emotions that went through that little kid’s head. To be able to show him how I felt—for him to now be old enough to digest that kind of information—made me feel really delighted. It was a key moment for him. He viscerally learnt that under normal circumstances, when they’re not provoked, reptiles pose absolutely no threat to humans.
I felt really proud of him. It was remarkable how a young boy like him had handled that whole situation. He wasn’t afraid or worried, and he had had every reason to be, finding himself being licked by one of the most venomous creatures in the world. He was just so excited to have gained such an insight into the workings of such an animal.
To anyone else, there might not have appeared to be anything in that encounter apart from a few hair-raising seconds. But to me, it revealed that Steve had something really unique, an understanding that went well beyond his years. A force-field. A gift. I believe that children are inherently kind but that as we grow up we repress that, in order to survive. But that kindness just never seemed to leave Steve. The fact that he understood, even at that age, that animals are individual living beings that want their life just as much as we want ours was quite remarkable.
If you don’t intuitively understand an animal you’re more likely to fear it, especially if it has big teeth or it’s venomous or able to do some physical damage. I could always sympathise with people who feared snakes, but to me it simply boiled down to a lack of understanding of how that animal works, nothing more, nothing less.
If only everybody did understand. And not just about snakes, but about all animals. If only everyone understood that their motivation isn’t to kill us; that in fact every animal out there, including snakes, sharks or crocs, would prefer not to have an interaction with a human at all. If we all had this basic understanding, and understood what animals need to survive, maybe we wouldn’t destroy their habitats by felling forests, polluting oceans or poisoning rivers. Maybe, if we all understood, just maybe we’d find a better balance.
Steve never forgot that experience; he talked about it for years afterwards. In fact, when it came to Steve’s understanding of animals on their own level, it was just the beginning of something far bigger.
***
In 1977, Mum came up from Melbourne to visit us. The kids loved showing her around and telling her all about the animals, giving her a running commentary on everything at the reptile park. She fell in love
with the orphaned sugar gliders living in our house, even as they used our faces as landing pads as they flitted from person to person. I was really glad she saw firsthand our labour of love and knew that it had all worked out for us after leaving Melbourne behind.
Mum fell ill with stomach cancer a short time later, so I went back to Melbourne to spend a couple of weeks with her and Dad, who was still battling with the debilitating effects of emphysema. I knew they didn’t have all that long. I wanted to spend time with them on my own, to thank them for the opportunities they had both given me. Everybody has their own ideas about funerals, but I decided that I wanted to spend time with them now, while they were still alive, rather than afterwards. I wanted to remember them exactly as they were: the strong, hardworking people who raised me.
Shortly after I returned to Queensland, Mum passed away at the young age of fifty-nine. A year later, Dad, now aged seventy-six, succumbed to his own long battle, and joined Mum. I had known that Dad wouldn’t last very long without her because he loved her so dearly. They were an inseparable pair and it was comforting knowing he didn’t have to withstand a broken heart for too long.
Mum and Dad had both always been so enormously supportive of our ambitions. Lyn would send them newspaper articles about the park when they appeared in the local paper. Mum kept them in a little scrapbook to show off to her friends. Because of their backing, I really felt as though Dad had given me one final tick of approval for the new road we had paved as a family. Although I was sad to say goodbye, I couldn’t have been more thankful to have had a dad like him. It’s a funny thing: no matter how old you get, you still set out to seek the approval of those you look up to. I knew in his absence I’d still strive for all of those important things he’d taught me: hard work. Passion. Family. Now I’d focus on inspiring my own son in the same way he had affected me.