The Last Crocodile Hunter

by Bob Irwin

  ‘I’m busted up, Dad, just like you,’ he said. ‘This is real fair-dinkum pain and it’s relentless. There’s no medication for it. But I’m not losing my dad too. So if you’re going to do it, then I am too. That’s the choice you’ve got right here and now.’

  Steve was inconsolable, only able to speak between broken gasps of air. For a bloke with such a hard, robust exterior, he had a real softness on the inside. That was Lyn’s gift to him; they were alike in that way. He certainly didn’t get it from me.

  ‘No, no, you won’t,’ I countered. I paused as a truck rushed past, shaking the vehicle violently. ‘You can’t do that. You’ve got a child who adores you and you’ve got a family to look after now. I have nothing left anymore. I’ve had my time.’ We argued for quite some time. Steve was also in a bad way, to the point where the family wasn’t sure if he’d carry on with his documentaries.

  Grief can be such a selfish emotion; I realised I hadn’t been thinking about how other people were feeling. I had been simply trying to cope, to get by, struggling to put one foot in front of the other. But Steve was compassionate beyond words about the things that he loved and he was anguished by the loss of his mum. As a boy he’d grown to share all of her passions, and as an adult, he would have protected her with his life. When Steve’s documentaries started to take off, it was Lyn who was his greatest fan.

  I guess I found some comfort in knowing that at least she got to see the extent to which Steve had got his name out there, that hyperactive, mischievous kid who had been such a handful for her at times. It would have been beyond tragic if she had not seen how far he got with the lessons she had instilled in him. She had raised him to fight for the preservation of wildlife, and his achievements had made her so proud.

  She had been such a steadying influence on all of our kids. She managed to always steer them down the right path. It’s not always easy to do, because once your kids get to a certain age, you really can’t tell them what they can or can’t do. All you can do is guide them and just hope for the best.

  Steve, Mandy and Joy were the result of her love, passion and hard work, and she lived on in the legacy she had imparted to them. I realised that I would still have her in our children. As I spoke to Steve, his pain and these thoughts made me turn the truck around. I hung up and began the painstaking journey home to my family.

  When I was only halfway there, I did a double-take when I saw Mandy’s car on the side of the road. Steve had told Mandy what was happening and she’d decided to meet me on the road to guide me home. She had remembered I always took a particular shortcut and gambled that I’d come that way today.

  She got out and eagerly waved me down. I pulled up alongside her, worried I’d upset her further in the middle of her own grief. Up until this point, I had only been thinking of myself.

  I was surprised to see her, but also relieved, because right in that moment I longed to feel a part of Lyn and in one of her children I found her. Mandy didn’t say a word, just threw her arms around me as I fell out of the truck. I howled, something my children had never seen me do. I had always been the parent but today I became the child.

  It took us twice as long to get home from there because I pulled over and fell apart over and over again. Mandy, who was following slowly behind in her car, would get out and give me a reassuring hug, cry along with me, talk me around, put me back together and we’d set off again. Mandy’s support was the fuel I needed to get this old truck home.

  When we finally pulled into the driveway, my truck’s headlights picked out a familiar figure on the verandah. Steve was pacing as he waited for me. I couldn’t have felt more pleased to see him. The two of us went out into the middle of the paddock and just sat there in the darkness. Steve had told me that he couldn’t face talking about Lyn’s accident. He had trouble talking about it even with me. So we both sat in silence for hours, crying, dwarfed under a blanket of stars.

  But eventually Steve said, ‘The day Mum left us, I got a really strong feeling there was something wrong.’ He told me he had been working at the zoo under the backhoe when a gust of wind had come out of nowhere, blowing his hat off his head. Startled, he had jumped up quickly, hitting his head hard on the machine. He had then felt an overwhelming urge to drive off in his car. He drove for hours, not knowing where he was going. Then he’d suddenly stopped and gone home. ‘If I had kept on a little longer, I would have seen her there on the side of the road. I realised later that I’d hit my head at the time she’d had her accident.’

  I didn’t doubt it: Lyn and Steve were as close as a mother and son could be. Born on Lyn’s birthday, they had always shared a really strong bond. He was more like Lyn than anybody else.

  ***

  Brett, the young policeman who had told me of Lyn’s passing, had kept an eye on me, dropping in regularly for a cup of tea. He’d have his lights flashing so I could see him a mile away down the long drive into the property. He went above and beyond and I’ll always be grateful for the friendship he extended to me. I found that I could talk to him honestly about the trouble I was going through. One day, sitting out there on the verandah, he asked me if I wanted to see where the accident had happened. I said no, that I didn’t want to know. It was in the past and I desperately wanted to remember Lyn in the happy times we’d shared, not the end.

  A few days later I was asked to go to the nearby police station to look over the belongings collected from the scene of Lyn’s accident. The policeman on duty asked me if I’d like to take anything of significance before they cleared the wreckage away. The car, twisted and broken and scattered with fragments of possessions from our happy life together, was sitting in the yard where the tow truck had left it. It was a dog’s breakfast, nothing but a scrambled mess. It seemed pointless to look over it—the thing that I wanted most of all couldn’t be brought back. I don’t know why I did, to be honest—all that remained were material possessions from a world where she no longer existed, things she no longer had a use for.

  Fumbling through the wreckage, I caught sight of Sandra’s smashed aquarium, sand and grit from it littered throughout the carnage. The shards of glass would surely have caused her a painful death. I had loved that spider; I’d had her for nine wonderful years. I picked up a few things that were salvageable: Ailac’s blanket and prized toy. I also took the only intact thing I could find: a stainless steel kettle. Maybe part of me found comfort in the idea of bringing at least something of Lyn back to the home where she’d never even had the privilege of unpacking her bags.

  It was just one little win against this vast loss. Her death was unjust and yet there was nothing I could do to fight it or change it. Everyone was telling me, ‘Life is cruel’, as if I should just accept that. But I couldn’t. To work together for nearly fifty years, to go through all those ups and downs, the good and the bad, and to have that taken away in an instant just when we were about to start a new life. She didn’t deserve it. We didn’t deserve that. And the rest of my life would be . . . what?

  I returned to Blackbutt to find Mandy waiting in the house. She’d been slaving over the stove. I couldn’t cook; I had been spoilt by Lyn. I had always done the maintenance jobs, while Lyn kept the rest of our life afloat. She was our rock. Back in the day, without even blinking she could cook for an army of people, sew clothes for the grandkids, manage the reptile park’s front ticket office and bottle-feed orphaned critters needing around-the-clock care. There was always a fresh chocolate slice to come home to and a hearty meal to be shared among the friends Lyn gathered to us. She was a positive influence on me like that; if it had been up to me I’d never have seen anyone. She took everything in her stride, organising me, the business and the kids. In those first few weeks without her, Mandy and Joy had stepped in to make sure I didn’t have to worry about the things Lyn would normally have taken care of. But after that, I didn’t know how I’d get on.

  I was in a bad way following my visit to the police station, after fossicking through the wreckage
that had claimed her beautiful, shining life. Everything I’d brought back was a mess, so Mandy jumped into action, placing Ailac’s belongings into a shoebox for safekeeping and wiping sand from the kettle. Then I heard Mandy exclaim, ‘What on earth!’ in the kitchen. I was startled out of my chair, moving faster than I had in days, curious to know what had caused such a reaction when we’d all been in such a dull state of slow motion.

  Just as she had been about to dunk the kettle in the washing-up water in the kitchen sink, movement had caught Mandy’s eye. There was Sandra, tiptoeing over the element and bits of broken glass and sand in the bottom. I was dumbfounded. Mandy wasn’t frightened, because she knew Sandra well. She’d even had one of her very own bird-eating spiders, called Samantha, that Steve had caught for her as a gift. That was normal kind of stuff in the Irwin household.

  I can clearly remember the day I caught Sandra. Late one afternoon, as I headed north towards Windorah, I had grown really tired on the road, almost falling asleep at the wheel. So I had decided to pull over where I was, just north of Quilpie in the Channel Country of western Queensland. I wound into the bush a little to get away from the noisy road trains that would pass all night, and threw a swag on a tarpaulin on the ground. I had just put my head down when I saw these really big spiders moving busily around, like pedestrians in a bustling city. It was a little bit unnerving, to be honest.

  The next morning, instead of just heading off, I took a really good look at these spiders and where they were living, which turned out to be holes in the ground. New, occupied holes had fresh webs at the opening, and when I dug up one of these, there was Sandra. I fell in love with her immediately. That was the first time I’d had anything to do with an inland bird-eating spider, or barking spider.

  As soon as I realised Sandra was alive, I sprang into action. First I cautiously scooped her up and found her a container. Then I couldn’t jump into my truck fast enough to head straight into town to buy her a new aquarium from a local pet store. A fire had been lit beneath me. I suddenly had a mission, to save Sandra, after weeks of feeling like there was nothing left in the world to hope for. I placed a ceramic water dish inside her new little house and firmly patted down a bed of new grit on the bottom. As I did, I recalled the first time she had shed her skin, all those years ago, when I had worried that she might have been dying.

  She had been lying upside down in her water dish. I was so new to keeping arachnids that I thought something terrible was happening, that I’d failed in her care in some vital way. I called out to Lyn in a panic. But Lyn, ever the optimist, saw signs of life. ‘She’s not dead, Bob. Something’s happening. Look!’ she exclaimed.

  As we watched in wonder, Sandra had begun to peel one leg at a time from her old skin, as if removing a pair of eight-legged stockings. She was lying in her water dish because it soaked her fragile dry skin, elasticising it enough to stretch it off her body. It was unbelievable, I had never seen anything like it. It took a long while but Lyn and I sat transfixed, glued to her aquarium, watching every last second of it until she revealed her new pale, softer skin. Over the next few days her new exterior had hardened and she had returned to feeding normally.

  I let Sandra explore her new home. She immediately sought shelter under a bit of bark, cautious in this unfamiliar world. I knew how she felt. Carrying the aquarium carefully to the kitchen bench, I placed her exactly where she had lived back at our replica Rosedale house, which allowed me to sit at the same spot on our kitchen bench and marvel happily at her again.

  I was elated. I felt like a little piece of me had returned from a hopeless place. When your world is turned upside down, these little signs of life can smack you awake like an ice-cold splash of water over your face. I was shocked that she was okay. She was completely fine, no lost limbs, no shards of glass in her anywhere. Sandra had not only miraculously survived, but had found shelter in our worldly possessions. In my heart of hearts, I knew it was a gift from Lyn to make sure that I had something left that I treasured, a tiny sign that although life can be bitter, there can be sweet bits too. And they can come at the most unexpected of times.

  I will forever be thankful to Sandra for turning up again. That day I began to hope that, together with my family, we would get through it. That there would be shafts of light on the road ahead for me. At any time, at any place, some small joy may still come, like a bird-eating spider hiding in a stainless steel kettle.

  7

  Ironbark Station

  Judy Irwin

  In the year 2000, thirty eastern grey kangaroo joeys came into my care, an unusually high number. I was an experienced wildlife carer but this was too many to take on by myself, and so the responsibility was shared across our small wildlife group in my local community near Toowoomba. Even between the handful of us, we were really starting to struggle with caring for this influx of orphaned and injured wildlife. The expense of their upkeep, combined with that of the other critters already in our care, was becoming more than we could handle, and we were also growing concerned about the lack of safe areas—far from busy roads and predators—where we could release them back into the wild with any kind of peace of mind. As a carer, when you’ve worked around the clock to give animals a second chance, the last thing you want to do is release them back into danger. But then the universe, it seemed, stepped in to help us.

  ‘Steve Irwin has built a hack-out facility on one of his wildlife reserves somewhere out near Blackbutt,’ a friend from our wildlife group told me excitedly. This property was just a fifty-minute drive from where I lived; it sounded too good to be true.

  We soon learnt that the property did indeed have a large fenced enclosure built to house kangaroos and wallabies in the first stage of their re-release into the wild. A gate would eventually be opened and they’d be free to hop off into the wild when they were ready to go. This pre-release facility backed onto miles of uninterrupted bushland.

  Australia Zoo invited our group out to the property to see if it would be an appropriate place to release our animals. We were told to meet the manager of Ironbark Station in the morning at eight sharp. Our entire wildlife group came along, excited. Because of the specific instructions about the time, we thought we’d been invited up for a feeding session or a special demonstration.

  But it transpired that the manager—Bob, of course—had just wanted to get us in and out as quickly as possible so that he could continue working. He wasn’t particularly friendly, just seemed to be fulfilling an obligation as he showed us the hack-out yard, an impressive expanse of enclosed paddock with a six-foot-high secure predator-proof fence, a dam in the middle and a big feeding shed. We all quickly dispersed after that and I headed home.

  I didn’t realise at the time that it had been just three short months since he had tragically lost his wife, and that he had only just moved to Ironbark Station. That explained the starkness of the home he lived in, which looked almost uninhabited.

  A few days later, my home phone rang. It was Bob. I was surprised to be hearing from him. ‘The zoo would like to buy the animal food for your wildlife group,’ he said matter-of-factly. He explained that management had decided to assist our group. I was to give him the animal feed list and the zoo would order it in.

  I was even more surprised when Bob delivered the food to my place in person a few weeks later. It was on this visit that he unexpectedly told me about his pain in losing Lyn only a few months earlier. He told me he needed something to do other than just working on his property because he wasn’t coping at all with his grief. He wanted to get involved with our wildlife group as a way of distracting himself. But I was surprised most of all by what came next, because I hardly knew him from a bar of soap. ‘I just need a hug,’ he said as he started to fall apart. ‘Please, can you just hold me?’

  So I held him, a complete stranger, for what seemed like an eternity, and my heart broke for him. It was clear just how empty he was. I couldn’t comprehend how he must have been feeling, but I empathised with
him immensely. Every week he’d visit, and each time would follow the same pattern: he would arrive with milk powder for the animals, pour his heart out over a cup of tea, I’d put my arms around him reassuringly and then he would get into his car and drive home, crying as he reversed out of my driveway. I hated to think of him going home to that empty house alone in that fragile state.

  In the months that followed we saw each other a lot. He even bought me a fridge in which to store the food, and eventually a cupboard too. For those first six months, he was a desperately broken-hearted man. The only way that he was surviving was to work twenty hours a day—even then he couldn’t sleep.

  I wanted to do something to help him, but the only cure was for him to grieve, to ride out those waves of pain whenever they came crashing down on his shore. Sometimes it was overwhelming and all he could do was learn how to cope when those days came. I knew he needed help with that, and that for some reason he had found some solace in our new friendship.

  I started to see that for Bob, it wasn’t just that he’d lost Lyn but that he also had to somehow learn to manage without her. That was where he was stuck. And so I started to loan him books to read. I had a lot of books on spirituality; it was a particular interest of mine. Spirituality had helped me with my own questions about life. I would tell him my views on death, and what I believe happens to the soul as the body dies. I thought he might find comfort, as I did, in the idea that we were eternal beings: the flesh dies but our souls live on. He studiously read all my books and we would sit and talk about it. He started to feel that nothing is ever really gone from us, and that brought about a shift in his ability to process things. At the core, I hoped to help him see that the love they shared could never be taken away from him. Just because Lyn wasn’t physically around him didn’t mean that her energy couldn’t be felt.