The Last Crocodile Hunter

by Bob Irwin

  The next thing I knew, I was airborne. Monty had picked me up by the hand—the same limb Old Man Freshie had got a few years before—and swung me sideways with such force that I somersaulted in the air and landed on my feet on the other side of the pond. It was all over in an instant; it was just that quick.

  I looked at my hand, and said aloud, ‘Here we go again.’ It was a right mess: he’d peeled the skin of my thumb back. In some ways, I was relieved that he’d grabbed my right hand, because it had never fully recovered, and it meant I still had one perfectly functioning arm. Amazingly, after tossing me across the enclosure, Monty had sauntered into his new pen, so when I had stopped the bleeding we secured all of the fences again. So at least that was done.

  But he was obviously annoyed. I’d simply got too close to him for comfort. He thought he’d teach me a little lesson in respecting his space. He clearly had no intention of doing me any great harm, because he’d had the opportunity to come after me again, and he hadn’t. He’d just sat there looking at me, like the king of the castle he was, as I staggered around pathetically. He had conveyed his message loud and clear: ‘I’m the crocodile. You’re the human. Capiche?’

  When I arrived at the hospital, the same surgeon from last time greeted me in the emergency room. He took one look at my hand and said, ‘Have you ever thought about changing your career?’

  ‘You did such a good job last time, I thought I’d come and see you again,’ I said.

  He stitched me back together and sent me home. But he’d been unable to do anything about the split fingers, which were now even more crooked than they had been before. They were here to stay. But it was, again, just down to pure complacency and stupidity on my part. One of these days, Bob, you’ll learn your lesson, I thought.

  I never held a grudge against Monty; in fact, I appreciated the fact that he hadn’t eaten me. He was my first salty, and had given me such an amazing insight into the way they operate, and he wound up being one of those special animals that you never forget. And he’d made sure I’d never forget him: I will have a decent-sized scar on my hand as a reminder for the rest of my days. Yes, Monty, crocodiles do rule.

  Not everyone shared our ideas about animals. Our conservation message, in particular, often fell on deaf ears. ‘I’d cut off his head with a shovel if that thing came into my yard,’ visitors would say of the snakes, or of Monty they’d remark, ‘Gee, he’d make a nice pair of boots.’ It really used to irk me when I overheard comments like that, but it remained an all too common attitude towards snakes, crocodiles and other gravely misunderstood animals in the ’70s.

  One afternoon, a group of men lined up to buy entry tickets from Lyn. They’d brought a hefty supply of beer, and when Lyn pointed out that no alcohol was allowed, they proceeded to skol the lot, throwing the empty tins on the ground. They were rough-looking blokes, seemingly as wide across the shoulders as I was tall, and they towered over us as they made their way through the gate.

  They wandered around the park for a while until they gravitated towards the snake pit. Here lived our beautiful copperhead snakes, incredibly shy reptiles that will do anything to avoid encountering people. As they leaned on the four-foot besserblock fence at the front of the enclosure, Lyn saw one of the men pull out a tin of beer he’d snuck into the park. She couldn’t believe her eyes when he poured the contents onto one of our beautiful copperhead snakes. The snake was soaked in beer and highly agitated.

  That was it—I could practically see the smoke coming out of Lyn’s ears and I thought to myself, Oh no, what’s Stumpy going to do here? (Stumpy was my nickname for Lyn because she was such a tiny little thing.)

  ‘How dare you do that to my snakes!’ she yelled, as she marched over to him. Lyn had a funny way of walking like that when she was on a mission. Then she ripped the tin of beer out of his hand and, all five feet of her stretched up on her tiptoes, she poured the remainder of the beer onto his head. He just stood there looking dumbfounded. Then she handed the empty tin back to him and with hands on hips shouted, ‘Get out!’

  I thought she was amazing, as I hid off to one side behind a tree. Those men were twice my size; I certainly wasn’t going to provide any assistance. Lyn fought this battle on her own and won decisively, as the men sheepishly retreated. She never tolerated cruelty of any kind towards the animals.

  You can’t force people to think the same way about the animals as you do, you can only hope they will. It’s got to be something they want to accept. You can’t teach people, or give them advice, if they’re not willing to accept it and embrace the whole message.

  ***

  Noel Peck:

  In 1973, I fatefully noticed a reptile park at Beerwah when my wife Jill had wound up rearing a couple of wallaby joeys. Information on their care was difficult to come by. When one wallaby joey fell ill, I called in to the park to see if they could offer any advice. Advice we did get, marking the beginning of a lifelong friendship with the Irwins.

  That day changed Jill’s life, giving her the inspiration to care for wildlife. As a result of how far that went, Jill and Lyn becoming the best of friends, and they became so sought after for their knowledge on animal husbandry that together they established the Wildlife Volunteers Association (WILVOS), a successful wildlife rehabilitation organisation that still exists today.

  A few years on Bob said to me, ‘You drive, let’s go’, as he encouraged our family to take on a rundown wildlife park of our own in Airlie Beach in the early ’80s. Being uncertain about what to do, I asked Bob his opinion and he heartily replied with, ‘You can do this’. His expertise was always at the ready, his support unwavering whenever we asked anything of him at all. Those years were the happiest, saddest and most rewarding years of our lives.

  A few years later, Jill and Noel sought advice about a gorgeous little grey and mauve female joey named Jedda. To all intents and purposes, Jedda appeared to be a regular rock-wallaby from the local area. But as Jill fed Jedda in a pouch at a Wildlife Preservation Society meeting, a member noticed that Jedda was no ordinary rock-wallaby at all. In fact, Jedda was a highly endangered species: a Proserpine rock-wallaby, or Petrogale persephone. This species was thought to have gone extinct, and was listed as that in many marsupial books. Jill quickly discovered that Jedda was the only one of her kind in captivity in the world.

  Noel Peck:

  On one of our many visits to the park, Bob was excited to show me some of his new lizards. ‘Hi guys!’ I said as he held up one to greet me. Straightaway Bob replied on the lizard’s behalf, ‘Say hello to Dickhead.’ The name stuck, and from that moment on we were forevermore known to each other as Dickhead.

  ***

  One of the greatest joys you can have in working with wildlife is to be involved in breeding an endangered species. What better legacy is there than knowing you’ve contributed not only to important research, but to the very survival of an entire species? If every zoological facility, sanctuary or aquarium took it upon itself to breed just one endangered species native to our country, what a difference that could make out there in our precious environment. It was always in the back of our minds that Lyn and I would get into the breeding side of things, in order to eventually assist in the recovery of wild populations.

  Macquarie University in Sydney soon got in touch after Jedda’s story made headlines in newspapers. They hoped to come and take samples from Jedda in order to take a closer look at her DNA. It turned out that the university had been carrying out a lengthy thirteen-year study into the genetics of the Proserpine rock-wallaby but it had all ground to a halt with the supposed extinction. With their research they hoped to prove that all sixteen species of rock wallaby in Australia were in fact the one, and that, because of this, different species could mate and reproduce.

  Jedda’s genetic composition painted a very interesting picture indeed. Their findings showed that out of the nineteen rows of chromosomes, only one differed from that of the close cousin of the species, the endangered yel
low-footed rock-wallaby. The scientists focused their research on the most critically endangered of the rock-wallaby species, which they thought needed their attention first. While the Proserpine rock-wallaby is endemic to north-eastern coastal Queensland, the yellow-footed rock-wallaby is endemic to semi-arid areas of New South Wales and South Australia. Up until now, after 6000 years of separation, they had been considered to be two distinct species, but it was looking more and more as though the two could in fact be the same genetic species, despite their different colouration.

  To test this theory, the suggestion was made to breed Jedda with a yellow-footed rock-wallaby. As part of the project, Lyn and I got permission to receive a yellow-footed rock-wallaby from Adelaide Zoo, a male named Rocky who hated people with a vengeance. The Macquarie University research team wanted to see if these two different species, separated for six thousand years, would mate and produce a joey together, and if they did, whether that joey would be fertile. If you mate two different species, you get sterile offspring. Just as a mule is the sterile offspring of a horse and a donkey, if a Proserpine rock-wallaby and a yellow-footed rock-wallaby were in fact two different species, then it was almost guaranteed that they too would produce an infertile joey.

  After some turbulent first dates, thanks to the very hostile Rocky, the pair eventually had a successful mating and produced a gorgeous little joey named Bindi. To everyone’s surprise, the joey turned out to be fertile. That proved that the two rock-wallabies were the same species, and suggested that perhaps their original habitat had been continuous from South Australia right up into Queensland. But then widespread urbanisation, the introduction of feral predators and the change in climate had interrupted their traditional habitats, causing the group to split and become two isolated groups, evolving physically to adapt to their new environments.

  Jedda eventually came to live at the park with us, and Bindi went on to live at a sanctuary in Charleville in south-western Queensland, where research continued as she was mated with a colony of yellow-footed rock-wallabies. All of Bindi’s offspring were fertile and so the experiment was doubly proven.

  When Jedda passed away, the university requested her body for scientific research but we made the collective decision to decline. We felt Jedda had given enough to science, and buried her in the park. In her short existence she had made an incredible contribution to science, resurrecting her species. It was a case of one little hop from Jedda, the day she arrived in Jill’s care, and one incredible leap for wallaby kind.

  That was a remarkably exciting project to have been involved in, even more so to have undertaken it with some of our very best friends. By turning up when she did, Jedda not only saved both the Proserpine and yellow-footed rock-wallabies, but the Proserpine rock wallaby was then added to the threatened species list, and the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Services commenced a national recovery plan for them.

  But fate had other plans for Noel and Jill’s park. ‘The animals are yours, Bob,’ Noel said to me grimly over the phone. In 1983, they had to foreclose on their Airlie Beach wildlife park due to the economic downturn. It was a tough pill to swallow for both of them. They’d put so much work into the unkempt park they’d taken over, bringing it up to scratch in just three short years by working many an eighteen-hour day. Closing down was not a decision that came easily.

  Winding down a wildlife park can be particularly difficult: while it is still a business and you need to make ends meet, closing isn’t just a matter of downing tools. The animals still need to be fed, housed and cared for with the same attention and expense as when the business was solvent. Noel and Jill were trying to do the right thing by all the animals in finding them the best possible homes.

  ‘When do you want us?’ I asked Noel. We were making arrangements to drive up to firstly collect their cassowary. He knew I had a soft spot for cassowaries, a prehistoric bird native to the rainforests of Far North Queensland. Apart from zoos, they didn’t live anywhere in the south of the country. Noel and Jill had taken such amazing care of that animal, bringing it back to health after it was rumoured to have been fed only mouldy bread for years.

  So Peter and I hitched a horse float to my car to go and bring this magnificent bird back. On arrival, our excitement turned to apprehension when we realised we’d have to get the cassowary out of the enclosure without tranquillising it first. Cassowaries are a flightless bird standing 1.8 metres tall. They’re capable of jumping up to two metres. And, most importantly, they’re equipped with a five-inch dagger-like claw in the middle of their three-toed feet, which, at the end of their enormously powerful legs, can cause serious damage to human flesh.

  ‘Be careful, or he’ll kick you to bits!’ Noel said to us with trepidation as we approached the enclosure. But as we got closer, it was clear that, while usually a shy species, this particular bird was well accustomed to people. After cautiously entering the enclosure, Peter moved to one side of him, and I moved to the other, and then we just picked him up, carefully tucking his legs beneath him.

  ‘Where’s the problem with this bird?’ we teased as we carried him past Noel to the truck. ‘He’s a dream!’

  We loaded the cassowary into a specially prepared horse float, where he was nice and secure. There was just a small eight-inch gap around the top to allow cool air in on the journey home. Noel and Jill had formed such close bonds with all of their animals and it wasn’t easy for them to see the first of them driven away. I imagined how this would feel for our own family in the same situation. I felt a deep sense of sadness for them as we drove off with their prized bird. They knew, of course, that they could visit him as often as they liked back at the reptile park.

  But we hadn’t driven more than fifty kilometres down the highway when I slammed on the brakes. I could see the cassowary in the rear-view mirror, lying dead in the middle of the road. How it had escaped is beyond me, even now. We thought we had considered every possible escape route and secured against them. I was devastated. We moved the body off the road and then the two of us just sat in the car and cried. The guilt that overcame me was unlike anything I had ever experienced before. That it had happened on our watch simply ripped my heart in two. Peter and I didn’t speak for the rest of the ten-hour drive home.

  When we got back I had to break the news to Noel in a phone call that I had dreaded making.

  ‘Bob, accidents happen with animals. You know that,’ Noel said. He was understanding, but I couldn’t accept it and I don’t think I ever have.

  Out in the wild, animals die constantly. And we can understand it: there are predators and prey, and that’s just how nature works. But when you take an animal into captivity, then it becomes your responsibility. I think the hardest thing to accept in our line of work is when you’ve made a mistake that results in the death or injury of any creature. The death of that cassowary was one of the saddest days I can recall in my time working on the wildlife scene. That image never left me. But when you live in a wildlife park and work with animals on a daily basis, they have plenty of opportunities to get their own back.

  ***

  ‘Yeah, I’m not feeling so good. Did you want to drive?’ I managed to say to Peter before slumping in my seat. I was starting to feel the effects of the highly potent venom of a western brown snake, one of the world’s deadliest snakes.

  Earlier that evening I had been feeding a large western brown snake as part of my rounds. While brown snakes are by nature cautious and shy, preferring to flee before attacking, they will defend themselves assertively when cornered. But as far as brown snakes go, this fellow was a pretty relaxed customer and I’d had him for years. I had put my hand into his enclosure to feed him a mouse and obviously wasn’t concentrating because the next thing I knew he had hold of my finger instead of the mouse. Well, that was pretty dumb, I thought to myself. And then I planned my next move.

  He hadn’t displayed any irritated behaviour; it had clearly been a mistake on his part as well as mine that he’d grasped my finger
instead of that mouse. It’s up to the snake whether he puts venom in his bite or not, and snakes won’t waste their venom when it’s unwarranted. Most people don’t realise that the majority of snakebites are dry bites, just puncture wounds with no venom injected. These days there are testing kits which you can use to swab the wound to check for venom. But back then there was no way to judge—until you started to feel life-threatening effects, that is. And the western brown snake has the same type of venom as the eastern brown snake; that is, pretty much as toxic as it gets.

  So I considered all the possibilities as I looked down at the two puncture marks on my finger, now oozing blood. Finally, I said to Lyn, ‘That’ll be a dry bite for sure. He’s not angry or anything. It’ll be okay.’ I was so sure, I didn’t even bother putting a constricting bandage on it to minimise the spread of any venom.

  Shortly afterwards Peter arrived at the park and we set out in the truck to catch cane toads by the bucketful for his biological supply business. But now things had taken a turn for the worse. Peter took one look at me and raced us back to the house, as my condition deteriorated rapidly. When we got to the driveway I said to Peter, ‘Just drop me off here, I’ll walk in . . .’ before realising that I couldn’t see a thing—I was completely blind. Peter carried me into the house and Lyn immediately called an ambulance.

  I was delirious and in and out of consciousness by the time I was rushed into Nambour Hospital, a twenty-minute drive up the highway. Nursing staff and doctors sprang into action. Lyn had called the hospital, even before the ambulance arrived, to let them know what type of snake it was, because it was still early days as far as the antivenom went. They used eastern brown snake antivenom because it would also work on western brown venom. I could hear Lyn’s panicked voice as she ran beside my trolley, but I couldn’t see her—I was still completely blind. I was also freezing cold—I felt as though I was in the Antarctic without a coat on, when it was actually a typically scorching Queensland summer’s night.