by Bob Irwin
***
Soon enough more and more people who were struggling to get support for really important environmental issues were writing to me. I realised that these dedicated individuals were scattered right across the country, fighting these little battles all over the place to protect some of our most precious native wildlife. Their work might have been different, but their stories were similar. And I started to see that I could offer them some sort of help. I might not have been able to give large sums of money, but I could help to shine a spotlight on the work that they were doing. Very few people seemed to understand that what these people were doing was really critical, but I could certainly relate to them.
Back in the early days, when Lyn and I were taking in orphaned and injured wildlife at the reptile park, things were no different. We didn’t receive any support from the government back then either. At one point Lyn and I were inundated with injured wildlife that had been brought in by the general public. They just kept coming, and in the end it was like a production line for around-the-clock feeding. There were no two animals that needed the same type of care. We had tawny frogmouths with broken wings, orphaned wallabies and glider joeys all needing different kinds of milk, snakes with puncture wounds after being attacked by dogs, koalas and possums with broken legs or arms after being hit by cars, you name it.
These animals of course were in no way a benefit to our park; we couldn’t even have them on display. Instead they lived in our house, filling every available space. We did it solely for the sake of the animals, to nurse them back to health, and, with a bit of luck, back to the wild. Or, if that wasn’t an option and they were too badly injured, to make the difficult decision to put them out of their pain. Lyn and I paid for everything—their food, the expensive veterinary bills for medication and surgery—with absolutely no assistance from the government.
And we weren’t alone. There were numerous other people out there who had taken it upon themselves to care for our injured and orphaned native wildlife. These people worked up to twenty hours a day, throughout the day and night, with no expectation of any reward apart from the hope of seeing that animal back out in the wild. The work was physically demanding and expensive and completely without compensation, not so much as a pat on the back. In a sense, they were sacrificing their own lives to give the animals a second chance. Yet in doing this work, we were all doing the job of the very government department responsible for protecting the native fauna of our country.
To me, it was no different from saying that I would go out and undertake plumbing work free of charge. To say, I’m going to go and work for whoever needs it, for all hours of the day and night and every weekend, for weeks and months and years on end, until I’m physically exhausted. And at the end of it all, I’m not going to get paid. Not a single cent. Now, why on earth would you do that? Because somebody had to. That’s precisely why our family and many others out there did this work.
But not everyone shared my point of view. Queensland Parks and Wildlife Services eventually threatened to confiscate the injured animals unless we agreed to pay a royalty for them. They expected us not only to do this work for free, but then to actually pay for the privilege of it. Instead of a handshake to thank us for the work that we did, we got a slap on the wrist. That didn’t sit well with me. They were simply relying on the emotion and dedication of a handful of people who were prepared to sacrifice their livelihoods for the animals.
I fought these fees for quite some time out of principle. I argued the case backwards and forwards with the department, pleading to bring some common sense to the situation. But ultimately they ended the discussion: we had to pay a royalty and that was that. But I didn’t quite see it that way.
‘I’m going to Brisbane to sort this out,’ I said to Lyn one day. I packed up a couple of baby tiger snakes that I had bred at the park into a calico bag.
Lyn wasn’t happy in the slightest, pleading with me to reconsider. ‘You’ve lost your mind,’ she said. She thought I was asking for trouble, and she was right.
I drove to the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Services headquarters in Brisbane. In my Queensland Reptile and Fauna Park uniform, I rode the elevator up to the main office front desk. ‘Excuse me, sir, you can’t go in there! They’re in a meeting,’ the receptionist called, as I marched past. I kept walking until I reached the room where these bureaucrats made at times ridiculous decisions about the natural world from the confines of their inner-city office.
I didn’t say anything, I just undid the knot at the end of the bag and tipped these little baby snakes right onto the big table in the middle of their boardroom and then turned on my heels. I walked straight past the receptionist, went down the elevator, back to my vehicle and drove home to Beerwah.
By the time the hour’s drive was up, I’d cooled down and was feeling some considerable pangs of regret. It was a really irrational thing to do, but you get pushed to a point where you simply can’t cope with certain injustices and you need to make a statement. That was my only way of getting my point across because we couldn’t afford to challenge the state government legally.
I never heard a word about that incident. I don’t know what happened after I left the building. But the demand to pay royalties suddenly ceased after that. We continued to care for the animals and the issue of royalties never resurfaced. But we never got a thankyou either.
In hindsight, of course, it wasn’t a smart thing to do. Thankfully, these days I’ve got better ways of dealing with things. I’m not quite as hot-headed as I used to be. But I can still remember and understand how difficult it is for dedicated people who are caring for our wildlife and not getting the support they need, people who’d feed the animals in their care before they fed themselves. And despite all the important work they were doing, they were finding it really hard to drum up any support or awareness. I couldn’t give a lot but I could use the Irwin name to at least get them some attention for their issues.
***
I knew straightaway that I wouldn’t be able to help the way Steve had—I wouldn’t be in front of TV cameras. I’d never liked public speaking, I’d stuttered badly when I was young. It’s no secret that I’d rather be hanging onto the back of a crocodile, covered in mud and mosquitos, than in front of a camera. I wouldn’t be making wildlife documentaries or walking red carpets; my focus would be on the grassroots wildlife work. I thought my role could be to help other people get the recognition they deserved for the work they were doing that had gone unnoticed.
I began with the issue of coal seam gas. I knew a fair bit about it by then, and I just hated it. I was horrified by what these companies were doing, with no consideration of either the environment or the people who lived in the affected communities. The companies just didn’t give a damn. To them, it was only about the money.
In 2011, I agreed to join a recognised coal seam gas campaigner, Drew Hutton, in protesting the issue. I was asked to help create a road blockade aimed at stopping the construction of a sixteen-kilometre gas pipeline at Tara, just west of Brisbane. Drew and his team were determined to make some noise about an issue that was continually being swept under the carpet.
‘Drew, what do you think would happen if we got arrested?’ I asked.
‘Well, that might get it out there,’ he replied. They couldn’t get anyone to pay attention to this issue. Not only would this pipeline potentially contaminate groundwater with the subsequent risks to health, but the gas company had also breached environmental permits to clear vegetation along that pipeline route. They had been granted permission to clear ten metres of remnant vegetation to put the pipeline in, but in many areas we observed they’d cleared forty metres wide over six kilometres. The company had clearly breached their environmental permit and yet the state government wasn’t doing a thing about it. If any ordinary Australian had done that, broken tree-clearing laws, they’d have gone to gaol, simple as that. It was extremely concerning that the government hadn’t addressed this, or the concerns
of Tara’s residents about the use of toxic chemicals. To not even be able to get an answer about that was just not acceptable in my opinion.
‘I’ll do it then,’ I said.
We turned up to the construction site and I sat down fair smack in the middle of the road. We brought the whole operation to a halt for a number of hours. The site was heavily patrolled by local police, and one officer came over. ‘Bob, I’ll give you three warnings to move off the road and allow the traffic through. But if you fail to obey those orders, then you’ll give me no choice but to arrest you,’ he said.
‘All right,’ I said.
I held my ground, there in the middle of the road, and sure enough, after three warnings they arrested me. As they did, the first police officer said to another, ‘He isn’t going to resist, so we treat him correctly.’ And they did.
In the police car we had a lovely chat about all sorts of different things. They were very polite and treated me as they would their own grandfather. When we got back to the police station they put me outside in a lovely little courtyard and made me a cup of tea. I watched a little water dragon out there for a while. They took my fingerprints and went through the normal procedure. But finally they wanted me to sign a document saying that I agreed to not return to protest at that site ever again. Then I would be free to go.
‘Sorry, fellas, but I can’t sign this,’ I said. So I had to go to court.
I certainly wasn’t prepared to sign a document that prohibited me from speaking my mind about a really destructive issue facing our environment.
What all that managed to achieve was widespread awareness of the real concerns about the state coal seam gas operations in Queensland and the laws governing them. The story of my arrest and the details of the issue went into just about every newspaper around the country. For a day in court and a fine of four hundred dollars, we succeeded in bringing it all out into the public arena. There were certain destructive aspects of coal seam gas that hadn’t received attention before that.
Sometimes the only way you can stop something is to get out there and make the public aware of exactly what’s happening. Otherwise it’s just too easy for people to shut their eyes and remain oblivious to what’s happening in their own backyard. As hard as it is to see at times, you need to get upset. You have to look at that awful photo or TV news story and allow yourself to get emotionally involved in what’s happening. You need to get angry about the cruelty and injustices facing our wildlife. Because only then will you be motivated to do something about it. You might not be able to stop it today, but who knows what position you may be in to help, somewhere down the track.
***
After a while, I was hardly ever home. Every time I felt myself getting slack, I heard Steve’s voice in my head, giving me another push. I did start to burn out, because it was constant, and draining, and nearly always distressing. I was seeing firsthand some of the worst atrocities against our environment at the hands of humans. And I was travelling long distances. There were a lot of people who needed help, and it wasn’t as though I had to go looking for them either. In every part of our country, there was something different going on.
In 2011, Cyclone Yasi hit the coast of northern Queensland, causing widespread damage to the prehistoric rainforests of Mission Beach. Cassowary habitats were destroyed, along with their food sources. I was asked to become a spokesperson as we rallied enough public awareness and donations, with Queensland Parks and Wildlife Services, to establish feeding stations for the iconic birds and ensure they survived until the rainforests recovered. There were under 150 individual birds that remained in the Mission Beach area. What struck me most was the dedication of the local community. People who had lost everything themselves—their homes, possessions and livelihoods—were the very same people who were out there helping us feed those cassowaries.
Later that year I joined forces with the people of the Mary Valley, in Queensland, to protest against the proposed Traveston Crossing Dam, which would threaten the endangered lungfish and the Mary River turtle.
I banded together with the local community of Hervey Bay, the humpback-whale watching capital of the world, to highlight the issue of protected whales in Australia’s southern whale sanctuary being illegally slaughtered by Japanese whalers, with little intervention from the federal government. I was pleased to hear that the organisation fighting for these whales, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, named their next anti-whaling vessel the Steve Irwin in Steve’s honour. I visited their ship for a tour, and came close to joining them for a campaign in the southern ocean, but my dicky ticker ruled it out.
I campaigned with koala conservation groups to influence the state government for greater protection of koala habitats. Koalas face localised extinction in south-east Queensland due to widespread land clearing and development. It is a fact that one of our greatest Australian icon’s future looks bleak.
I became the face of the Fight for the Reef campaign and toured the state of Queensland with the late Felicity Wishart, a pioneering activist from the Australian Marine Conservation Society, to highlight the devastating impact of dumping dredge spoil onto the Great Barrier Reef, one of the seven natural wonders of the world, which I saw dying right before my eyes.
I fought hammer and tongs alongside a steadfast individual called Colin ‘Who Cares’ Riddell to highlight the need for change to the Native Title Act which allows the slaughter of endangered dugongs and sea turtles. Dugongs were being drowned slowly as well as cut up while they were still alive, and our precious sea turtles were being left upside down on beaches to die from dehydration. Cruelty is cruelty; it isn’t a matter of race. As a result of Colin’s tireless work, the Native Title Act was changed to include Indigenous people in regards to laws governing animal cruelty.
And of course every time the state government brought up the idea of reintroducing trophy hunting to ‘manage’ the populations of saltwater crocodiles—after every fear-mongering media headline about a croc attack—I slammed it again to every media outlet. Nothing makes my blood boil quite like the topic of trophy hunting, after all of those years of research and our life’s work in educating people on the vulnerability of our apex predators. I find it difficult to understand how anybody could get any pleasure or satisfaction from killing an animal, full stop. Not because they need to kill that animal to survive themselves, but just because they can.
I travelled up and down the east coast of Queensland, uncovering more and more of these issues, and I realised that I had only just scratched the surface. These were just the people who I had met. There would be countless more people out there doing the same sort of great work who I hadn’t even heard of. I met so many inspirational Australians fighting for a better world for our wildlife: they were self-funding and building sea turtle hospitals off Gladstone and Cairns and bat hospitals in the rainforest. There was a tree kangaroo rehabilitation centre, an animal most Australians probably wouldn’t even realise exists. I came to hear of a Perth grandmother who has rescued nine hundred bears from the illegal wildlife trade in Southeast Asia and relocated them to purpose-built sanctuaries. There was a young woman at Airlie Beach who had banded a team of volunteers together to remove over 200,000 kilograms of marine debris out of the iconic Whitsunday Islands. Also, koala hospitals; seabird rescue; shark and crocodile appreciation groups; and people saving the bilby.
When my focus had been narrowly on Australia Zoo or Ironbark Station, to a degree I was clueless about what was going on out there in the wild. Until I got out there, I didn’t realise how bad the situation was. You just can’t comprehend how dedicated some of these people on the frontline of fighting for our wildlife and the environment are until you see it for yourself.
In 2012, Judy and I and some of our friends decided to launch our own not-for-profit foundation, the Bob Irwin Wildlife & Conservation Foundation Inc. The goal of the organisation is to advocate for wildlife and the people supporting them. It’s been a collaborative effort from so many
people and I am thankful to the volunteers, especially the work of our foundation movers and shakers Dennis Carroll and Graham Morrow for their years of dedication to get it up and running.
I think we often forget that unsung heroes need a little encouragement from time to time. When you’ve got people working tirelessly for little or no reward, a tiny bit of recognition for their thankless work can be the fuel they need to go on another six months, or another year. That’s something I’ve really enjoyed being able to do. And if a visit from me gets them some media coverage, or if my backing can get them a bit of extra funding, then to me that’s what it’s all about.
It’s still true that I don’t like the limelight or feel comfortable around groups of people. But I get a kick out of meeting courageous wildlife people right around Australia. And they’ve done me the honour of allowing me into their lives and letting me get involved. I’ve learnt a lot from these people and from seeing firsthand the work being done out there. People always want to repay me in some way, but I feel like I get a lot more than I give. Every time these people help another injured animal back to the wild, it makes me so happy—and on many occasions I’ve been lucky enough to be there when that happens.
I won’t ever stop supporting them. I’ll keep doing it for as long as I’m here, because I’m a proud Australian. I’ll continue to help these people when I can, no matter where they live in this lucky country of ours. Every little bit of work they do is important and all of these people need our help.
***
For most of the last ten years I hadn’t had a lot to do with Steve’s old team. I suppose I didn’t want to get in the way, or interfere with the way things were. But I certainly missed it; I had very special memories of working with that great group of people. In the last few years that’s changed and they’ve started to come back into my life. It’s been really great to see them again and reconnect.