by Bob Irwin
But the mood backstage was distinctly different today with nobody uttering a word. Those usual fears just didn’t enter my mind. We were silently standing around, not really knowing what to say. Quiet with the weight of our own heavy thoughts.
I quickly realised that it wasn’t only me that was plagued by these thoughts about the pending show. Just before it was about to start, Toby broke the silence. Toby was one of my first managers, and had taken me under his wing in the early days, teaching me everything that I now know. It was unfamiliar territory to see such a strong figure in my life crushed by the weight of this shared grief.
‘No one feels that they are up to doing the show today—can you stand in for us?’
Looking down at the ground as I scuffed my boot nervously on the concrete, I’d hoped that he was directing that question at someone else. My heart sank as I looked up to see the rest of my team staring back at me with desperation in their eyes. No pressure, I sarcastically thought. Despite my nerves, deep down I was flattered that they had asked me to do it. I couldn’t have felt more proud to be asked to represent my team at our darkest hour. I just sincerely doubted my own ability to pull it off.
Before I found my voice to accept the task, I had another willing volunteer. Crocs Dan put up his hand. ‘I’ll do it with you, Lefty. I’ll back you up.’
So then I thought, Okay, we’ll get through this, we’ll just get in there and get it done. There was no conversation between us to plan the delivery of the show or what was going to be said, if anything was going to be said at all outside of our usual educational banter.
Then came the countdown. I stood frozen waiting for the gates to open and the show to begin. The first time today that I had no option but to stand still as the floodgates burst in my mind as despondent thoughts permeated that wall that I had previously built up allowing the inconceivable realities of our new path ahead to set in.
‘Sixty seconds. Standing by . . .’
The video clip rolled; there was no turning back now.
These animated clips had been so commonplace as part of our daily show that they were just a part of the Australia Zoo furniture. On a normal day we’d almost become immune to these kinds of ‘Steve-isms’ littered around the park giving people a hint of that recognisable Irwin zest exploding into their zoo visit. But today I was more aware of it than I had ever been before. Steve was everywhere you looked in this place, how would we keep up that momentum without him? Surely we couldn’t just take down the billboards plastering his face on every corner of this facility and keep up the pretence that nothing had happened? The sponsor-driven big screen that towered above the Crocoseum was bursting with material designed to hype up the crowd for Steve Irwin’s celebrated arrival.
A sixty-second countdown launched depicting Steve preparing for the croc demo ambitiously making his way through the zoo and approaching the Crocoseum as numbers ticked over on the screen. Footage exploded in high definition of an energetic crocodile being let out of its enclosure, thrashing around and cruising on the surface of the water down the canal, nicknamed the love tunnel, which fed into the heart of the Crocoseum. Commando-style sound FX completed the package, giving it that suspenseful dynamic of his Crocodile Hunter documentaries. Steve was shown nearing the back entry point of the Crocoseum and being mic’d up for the show. He had determination in his stride as he drove his way closer to the crowd.
‘Five, four, three, two, one . . .’ Boom. The screen went black. The sound of the gates winding open filled the backstage area as the team behind the scenes released the crocodile. This was it.
Instead of Steve’s all-too-familiar face in his trademark khakis, boots and mop of wavy blond hair detonating through the gates of the Crocoseum to his cheering fans in the crowd, on this day I was to be his substandard replacement. Today there was to be no smoke machines blaring out of the love tunnel to go with that clip that normally enhanced that element of showmanship. It would be a noticeably different show. But the show must go on, I told myself, because that’s what Steve would have wanted us to do.
The crocodile was guided by the team from the back enclosures and channelled down into a pond reaching the middle of the arena, similar to what had just featured on the big screen. As the crocodile perfectly made his grand entrance, I marvelled at Steve’s ambitious design in dreaming up the Crocoseum—a concept that he was told would never work, training saltwater crocodiles to travel on cue. But he proved them wrong because he was remarkably bright and had insight like no other. It was a resounding success building a sports-style stadium with the purpose of having a crocodile front and centre as the main attraction. His life’s ambition was in endorsing crocodiles to have their name in lights and here they’d dazzle forevermore.
I went first to welcome the audience, and Dan brought the crocodile through second. My knees felt like they were buckling beneath me. I anguished over how I was about to get through this.
Starting to take my first few paces into the middle of our grassy stage, I felt that I had the wind knocked out of me instantly as I became aware of the audience. It wasn’t the overflowing crowd that disarmed me but the sea of Australia Zoo staff lining the front of the Crocoseum looking hopefully back at me. Our peers had formed a guard of honour—a khaki-clad strong wall of Steve’s greatest supporters standing there with us in witnessing the first of the milestones without him. They’d dropped all tools from right across the zoo to be there watching. Cleaners, zoo keepers, retail staff, family.
I stood out there feeling like a kangaroo in a spotlight—so many eyes on us to get through it. I knew we were doing this show on behalf of our Australia Zoo family who were grieving. I had a job to do and the reality was that there was still a large crocodile out there, so thankfully my attention quickly became focused on that. I heard Steve’s words reverberating in my mind.
‘Mistakes happen when people get complacent. Never take your mind off the job—no cutting corners, do everything properly. Remember that a great day can turn into your worst nightmare in twenty seconds if you muck up. Don’t get bitten or you can go back to laying bricks.’
His advice calmed me, distinctively amusing but with a serious undertone. I knew that in his absence, I’d always call on his teachings whenever I needed to. Those kinds of things will be etched in my mind forever; in every action he taught me, I’ll heed that advice. So in one respect, it was keeping your mind on the task at hand knowing that you don’t want to slip over, fall in, do anything that would put you in danger. But on the other hand, I wanted to really make Stevo proud. Proud of his entire team stepping up and showing him, ‘We’ve got this now, mate.’
So we did it, hands down the greatest challenge I have ever faced. Then Dan, shy by nature, completely floored me as he turned to address the audience in his confident closing words.
‘Now’s not the end, it’s just an opportunity to take Steve’s message forward, to ramp everything up and not let that message die with him. We need all of you to help us to keep it going, not to let that hard work come undone.’
Dan put his head down briefly and we both stood silently as the crowd gave a standing ovation. We knew of course that it was deservingly directed at Steve, not us.
Dan absolutely nailed it, I thought, as I stood beside my mate in awe of his words. He’d taken such a big step up to the mark expressing the thoughts that the rest of our heartbroken team were unable to verbalise. I don’t know where he found the strength or words but one thing that I do know is that he did a stellar job. The world was watching, and Dan represented our entire team exceptionally well. I have never felt more proud to be part of that team than in those ten minutes in the spotlight of the Crocoseum.
When the crocodile was locked down back into his enclosure and the audience had dispersed from the stadium-style seating of the Crocoseum like a busy ant colony running out of an ant mound, I had a brief moment alone to reflect. The normal after-show feeling was overwhelmingly different. Instead of that sensation of buzzing adr
enaline from having delivered yet another successful croc demo educating the crowds, proving to ourselves that we had conquered our public-speaking fears, I felt as though someone had walked right up and punched me hard in the guts, winding me as I realised that a fundamental part of us was missing. You could sense from every person watching, with all eyes on us, a feeling of immense loss. The crowd still clapped and cheered but the tears flowing from their eyes showed they were battling to come to terms with the loss of our irreplaceable Aussie legend. It was clear that their applause was a sign of both gratitude and sympathy for our entire Australia Zoo family.
That show was a marker of the first of the days we confronted without our leader. The future was coming at us no matter how much we wanted to stop the clocks, pause time, be back in Lakefield and feel whole doing the things that we loved most of all. The actuality was startling in that moment for me that we were moving forward into a future without our trusty pilot, and it was going to take some time to adjust. I knew in that instant that things were never going to be the same again, we had just seen a door close on the most exciting and profound chapter that had shaped our young years. Steve helped us as we grew from boys to men to understand the world through his unique and wonderful perspective. He let our team see who he was, and that will forever be his greatest gift to all of us. Above all else, he was real.
Brian ‘Briano’ Coulter
Over the years, Steve and I had helped each other through some hairy situations: he’d raced to me when I’d had a serious car accident, I’d lifted him out of the way of a charging, open-jawed salty after he’d slipped in the enclosure. ‘You know, you bloody saved my bacon,’ Steve said. But that was just what it was like: we had each other’s backs. What we all had with Steve was certainly not the average relationship you have with your boss.
But as it turned out, no amount of first aid courses could have helped me change the outcome of that unbelievably tragic day that Steve died, filming on his beloved vessel, Croc One, out on the Great Barrier Reef. I would have given my right arm to change that. My wife Kate and I just felt like massive failures because we’d tried to save him, and we couldn’t. I was riddled with sadness and guilt.
To go through that with him was difficult enough. It was traumatising. One of the most gut-wrenching feelings was returning to the zoo to face his family. To walk back through those gates without him was awful: I was coming back and he wasn’t. I wondered how I could face them after what had happened. Would they blame us for not being able to help him?
The first person I saw was Bob. I felt physically sick when I saw him. That was Steve’s father. His best ever mate. I didn’t have any words to make his pain go away. But as soon as Bob saw me, he walked right up to Kate and me and embraced us. Despite his own palpable grief, he still comforted us, and helped lift the weight of sadness, despair and guilt from our shoulders. That hug went a long way for me that day. It meant the absolute world.
With Bob’s arms around me, I was suddenly taken back to something that had happened a couple of years earlier. On the day of baby Bob’s naming ceremony, Steve decided that he would take his new son in with him to do the croc show, for Bob’s public debut. He’d done it for years previously with Bindi, so I didn’t bat an eyelid. He was the ultimate father, he would never have done anything to jeopardise the safety of his children. He’d been brought up in the middle of a zoo and these kinds of interactions with animals were mild in comparison to what he got up to as a kid and out in the wild.
But the camera crew decided to make a big deal of it and the media went ballistic. Steve was suddenly painted as the worst dad in the world. He was completely devastated. He was in the running for Australian of the Year and they pulled his nomination because of the negative press. Steve understood, but he was very upset about the perception out there about him as a father.
A week or so later, Steve was doing one of his routine crocodile demonstrations in the Crocoseum when out of nowhere he started sobbing and telling the crowd how much he loved his children and how devastated he was to be labelled a bad father in the eyes of the world. He was terribly upset. I was sitting there watching, not knowing what to do, but bloody hurting for him. The next thing I knew, Bob senior walked straight out from behind the scenes into the centre of the Crocoseum and wrapped his arms around Steve. Such a public move was really unlike Bob; he usually kept out of the spotlight. But he could see how much Steve was struggling. They embraced for a long time as Steve pulled himself together, and then he addressed the audience again. ‘Your family are the most important thing you’ll ever have,’ Steve said, visibly heartened. Bob just turned around and left as quietly as he’d arrived.
I decided I needed to give Bob the opportunity to know exactly what had happened on the day of Steve’s accident. I thought there might come a time when he’d want to know some details, and be reassured that Steve had gone peacefully. I certainly didn’t want Bob to think that he couldn’t ask me for fear of upsetting me, or making me relive it. So after tossing and turning for many weeks, wondering how to broach the subject, I decided that the very next time I saw him I would just bring it up. I was nervous, because I didn’t want to upset him any more than he already was.
A few weeks later, there was a moment alone with Bob on his verandah. ‘Would you like to know how it happened?’ I asked.
Bob paused, but he didn’t look up from his teacup. ‘No, it’s not something I care to know about,’ he said matter-of-factly.
We changed the subject. I understood where he was coming from. His response perfectly matched where he was at that time with his grief: quiet, reflective, processing. I felt it’d been right to give him the chance to know if he’d wanted to and now I could lay it to rest. After that, I vowed to myself I would never talk to the media about the private events of Steve’s passing. Out of respect for Bob, and the rest of the family. I never did and I never will.
Bob Irwin
I really respected Briano for offering me the chance to put the whole picture together in my head, because I certainly had pieces missing from Steve’s last moments. But that was intentional. I wanted to remember him exactly how I last saw him: sitting around the campfire, alive and full of enthusiasm like always. He was purely himself in that memory, and I kept it alive in my head, the two of us side by side in Lakefield National Park, doing what we loved.
People handle things differently. Some people can’t rest until they know every detail, but at that particular time, I felt that I didn’t need any more information. I just couldn’t cope with anything else. I’d already had enough.
Upon reflection, I was probably a little bit abrupt with Briano. Perhaps I should have explained myself a little bit better but I really didn’t have it together then. I didn’t want to put Briano through reliving it either.
I suppose I tried to shut out a lot of the specific details because I didn’t want to accept that it had happened in the first place. I had a rough idea. But the most important piece of information I already knew: that Briano had been beside him to comfort him in his final moments. It had all been over quickly, but Steve would have known he was going to die and you wouldn’t wish it on anyone to be with someone in a moment like that and not be able to do a thing to change the outcome. Steve was lucky that he had somebody who he respected so much to hold him for those last few moments of his life, rather than dying alone on the bottom of the ocean. He was with a mate who loved him and whom he loved in return.
If you were ever in a difficult situation at any time, anywhere, you really couldn’t wish to have a better bloke standing alongside you than Briano. I knew in my heart that he would have done everything in his power to change the result of that awful day, and I considered that to be reassuring. That was proof to me that Steve managed to surround himself with a group of very loyal people. They weren’t just friends or colleagues, they were mates for life.
When I first saw Briano walk through the gates of the compound when he returned to the zoo, I just ins
tinctively wanted to hug him. He looked terribly sad. That hug wasn’t just for his benefit, but for mine as well, because in some strange way I needed to be able to thank him. As a parent, you of course want to always be there to comfort your children when they’re hurt or in their hour of greatest need. But I hadn’t been there, I’d been a long way away. To know that he was comforted in that way, well, that’s all that I could really have asked for.
Briano could have spoken about that incident to the media, of course. He could have quite easily sold the story and made a hell of a lot of money. But Briano’s faithfulness didn’t waver. And the family and I respected that beyond words.
***
Steve was offered a state funeral, but our family declined, because he was just an ordinary bloke and that’s how he would have wanted to be remembered. We opted to have a private ceremony at the zoo, strictly for friends and family.
The media were terribly unforgiving to have to deal with at such a time. No matter how widely known my son was, we were at heart just an average family wanting to grieve in private and they were making that very difficult. When friends and family came and went they’d have to lie down under a blanket in the boot to avoid a barrage of photographers. The media were so bloodthirsty that they even offered the funeral parlour a significant sum of money for any details of Steve’s death.
The funeral was held in a private area of the zoo, inaccessible to the media, but choppers still hovered above, trying to get an aerial photo of our family and the service. We had covered the area with shadecloth suspended high on poles to provide privacy from the air, and we also set up a decoy location, with a marquee and chairs, in another area of the zoo. This was all so that we could just get on with what we had to do and lay Steve to rest.