by Bob Irwin
From time to time we all get together for a barbecue out at Camp Chilli or they get me involved in their current work with wildlife. It’s great to see what they’ve gone on to do, whether that’s continuing to work with crocodiles or now being leaders themselves. While most of them have since moved on from Australia Zoo—they are now zoo curators, researchers, park rangers, firefighters, or construction workers—they carry on the legacy, spreading Steve’s message far and wide in their own way. That makes me feel really pleased. A part of me wonders if that was always Steve’s intention. He knew that they wouldn’t always be crocodile keepers, but they would still be emulating his message about following your passion and instilling that in others.
Some of the boys are now involved in our wildlife foundation, along with other young people who now form our team. We’ve got a really dedicated, enthusiastic bunch of volunteers who work well together, full of ideas for large-scale research projects on crocodiles and cassowaries that they want to bring to fruition. They’ll take it to new heights. In their hands, the foundation will remain a voice for wildlife, and an advocate for better management practices and guidelines for their wellbeing.
At other times it’s about basic stuff: grassroots observation work, advocacy, or simply all getting together somewhere remote to camp and share ideas about wildlife conservation. There’s nothing better than bringing together a group of enthusiastic, like-minded individuals for nature appreciation.
There are enough young people in the organisation now to be able to take over. It’ll eventually be time for me to hand the baton on to these young people, so they can get out there and do what needs to be done. I think it’s special to have young people involved in taking care of our environment, because it’s not my future anymore, it’s theirs. Their children and their children’s children will be the ones to benefit from a healthy planet. And that’s something we should all be concerned about.
Even though my time’s almost done, I’ll keep on going for as long as I can. I’m hoping for another ten years. For the time being I’ll continue to advise them from the sidelines and encourage their interests and push them as hard as I can. The day that I can’t keep up with these young ones in the bush anymore is probably the day that I’ll give it away. But for now, I’ll push on. Sometimes my body lets me down, but I work through it and I hide behind a tree if I’m suffering a bit. Or I find something fascinating on the ground that everyone should stop and take a long, close look at—I’ve got that one down to a fine art now.
Bretto, one of the members of our foundation and part of the old team at Australia Zoo, caught me in one of these moments recently when I was struggling a bit. ‘You’re a sneaky bugger, aren’t ya?’ he said affectionately.
‘Oh yeah, but there’s ways and means of doing these sorts of things. You’ll learn that as you get older,’ I replied with a smile.
***
It never ceases to amaze me when I’m out on the road how many people come up to me and say, ‘But Bob, I’m only one person. I can’t do anything.’ Well, let me start off by saying that those people are wrong. Because it is up to every individual to do their little bit too. We can’t blame the government for everything that’s happened, because every single person is responsible, in some way, for the health of our planet.
When I was a kid some species of animals were regarded as common, garden variety. Those same animals are now considered threatened or endangered. This is happening before our eyes, in our lifetime. Europeans have only been on this continent for around two hundred years. We’ve done all this damage in the blink of an eye. Most Australians don’t know that we’ve got the worst mammalian extinction rate in the world. We’ve lost over thirty species since Europeans arrived. It’s not just the famous Tasmanian tiger, we’ve lost many more vitally important species. Even as I write this, more than seventeen hundred species of fauna and flora are listed by the Australian government as ‘at risk’, which means there’s a chance they’ll go extinct unless we do something about it. The time to act for conservation is now.
Back in my day we could claim ignorance, but young people today haven’t got excuses like that anymore. Young people have new ideas, better technology and research available to them at the click of a button. And that’s what makes me excited. With that I can see a good future now, whereas before I couldn’t. Before I got involved with passionate young people I was worried, but I now have faith in the future generation to fix things. When it’s my time to go, I’ll be content knowing that there are a lot of young Australians who have a better understanding of what needs to be done in the future to care for the environment. My generation made a heck of a mess of things in a very short time and it’s now over to young people as our future leaders to learn from our mistakes.
So when people ask, ‘What can one person do, Bob?’, my answer is that one person can do a hell of a lot.
Can you imagine how I feel when I find out that there’s a group of little schoolkids in a third-world country, whose classroom is just a wooden hut with no walls, and yet they have a television set. And you know what they’re watching? Steve Irwin. They’re out in the jungle, and they’re watching him and listening to his message about conservation. I simply cannot put into words how I feel about that; it just makes me feel immensely proud. It never ceases to amaze me just how many people Steve affected. Almost daily we still get emails from people all around the world who have been influenced by him. There’s probably more now than there was when he was still here. That makes me feel good. How could you feel anything but proud when your son is still being remembered for something as fundamentally important to our planet as wildlife conservation? And not just remembered—he has influenced so many people to get off their backside and do something themselves. A lot of them are young people and that’s exactly what we want.
I see shades of Steve in these people and many others I meet out there with that special connection with the environment and wildlife. He had a way of getting to people and he really did shout his message out there loud and clear. It is amazing to see how many people he affected along the way. My biggest dream is to make sure that message keeps going through all of these inspiring young people who have become involved in the conservation of wildlife and wild places. That’s exactly how we will keep that dream alive.
In my lifetime, humanity seems to have largely lost touch with the wonder of the natural world, but when my time comes to leave this physical world I will leave satisfied in the knowledge that the planet is in good hands. I am deeply humbled to think that my legacy, and that of my son, has captivated imaginations and inspired so many to truly connect with the magic of nature. I’m excited to think that an ever-growing army of young, energetic conservationists can pick up the baton and inspire all people to value and appreciate the magnificence of this planet we call home. Nature is (thankfully) very resilient if we give it half a chance.
So for me, it all comes back to that hyperactive little blond-haired kid. Because in my eyes there was no one more concerned about the state of our planet and the animals than he was. I guess the greatest thing for me today is seeing animals like snakes and crocodiles finally falling under the banner of animal welfare. That certainly wasn’t the case when we were starting out. Steve showed the world that it was okay to wear your heart on your sleeve, and to get emotional and fight for what’s important. Why shouldn’t you be passionate about the very thing that sustains our own survival: the health of planet Earth?
When I think about it, I really have been blessed with a great life. I’ve been one of those people who has been extremely fortunate to work with my passion. There are lots of things that I’d like to have turned out differently, of course, but they’re just the obvious ones. We’ve got to accept that we can’t change the past, much as we would like to. That’s life. All we really can do is to make the best of what’s left with the people we care about. None of us is really here for all that long in the grand scheme of things. The goal is to achieve as mu
ch as we can, and leave behind a legacy for our grandchildren in the short time that we have. What can be better than clean water, fresh air and a wealth of wildlife?
Just when we might think we have figured things out in this funny little experience called life, the universe will throw us a curve ball to make us improvise. We’ll all face that at some time or another to varying degrees. When I walked away from Australia Zoo, when Steve died, when I lost Lyn, I didn’t think it would be possible to survive. But throughout this journey I realised that it’s possible to find happiness in unexpected places. It was at the bottom of grief’s barrel that I again found the things that mattered the most to me. The animals. The environment. The people who fight for what’s important.
The universe is funny that way. Sometimes it has a way of making sure we end up exactly where we belong. From time to time, I still think, ‘Well, you haven’t really achieved what he would have wanted you to achieve.’ But I’m content with the fact that I’ve at least tried. The most important thing in life is, no matter how many blows you get, to always get back up, because there’s plenty out there to fight for.
15
Return to Cattle Creek
After thirty long years, I made a pilgrimage back to Cattle Creek in Far North Queensland, to the place where it all began. Of everywhere that Steve and I had ventured together, Cattle Creek held a special significance because it was where our education in crocodiles really began. It took me many years to pluck up the courage to return, knowing it would be a reminder of our good times. Would it all come flooding back? Would it be too painful?
Right up until I got on that plane, I seriously considered pulling out. But Amanda insisted, and I have no doubt she would have got me on that aircraft kicking and screaming if she had to. She had tracked down the Accorneros, who I had lost touch with, booked flights and hired a car, as well as coaxed me to go on the journey in the first place. Amanda and Judy worked as a team to convince me, Judy driving me the three hours to Brisbane airport. And I was immensely glad in the end that they did, because it will certainly be something that I’ll take with me when I go.
Stephen Accornero and his wife Annalisa welcomed us into their home just outside Ingham. He had aged somewhat since the last time we’d met, but his larger-than-life stature and hearty laughter were exactly as I had remembered. ‘You won’t believe how many crocs are around here now, Bob! You said that once you took out the CEO then the teenagers would run rampant. Well, you were right—nowadays, we see them walking across the road. They’ve lost all fear of people. Not like it used to be when you blokes first arrived.’
I was sad to learn that his own father, Dante, or ‘Danny’ to us, had passed on. He had been such a wonderful father figure to Steve throughout the many months he had camped out there alone. Stephen and Danny had become Steve’s close friends in those years, and the Ingham district was never far from his heart no matter how famous he went on to be.
Stephen and I exchanged our fondest old memories over cups of tea. I noticed that his mug was covered with images of Steve. He told me he drank from it every morning.
‘In an interview on the US 60 Minutes he referred to where he first learnt to catch crocs as “downtown Cattle Creek”—an insider joke for all of us locals. After that he asked if we’d been watching. He said he liked to keep that spot as his private getaway!’ Stephen said, laughing. But then his tone changed. ‘You know, my dad recalled a particular conversation with Steve right up until the day that he passed. One day back then, just out of the blue, sitting around his campfire, Steve suddenly told my father that when you eventually passed on, he didn’t want to go to your funeral. He said he wouldn’t be able to handle it, you going before him. But Dad reasoned with him, saying, “Your old man’s been there for you whenever you needed him. He wiped your backside when you were a baby, and he’s done everything for ya! Isn’t it right that you should pay your respects to him?” And Dad said that a couple of days later Steve came up and said he was right.’
And Stephen told me something else, something that he was initially reluctant to bring up because he thought I might reckon it was all hocus pocus. He said that Steve had often spoken about our close connection. ‘Us Irwins have a sixth sense,’ Steve told him, ‘We don’t have to speak to know what the other is thinking. We know when something is going to happen to one of us.’ As Stephen spoke I thought about the time my son had been bitten on the leg and I’d unexpectedly turned up a few days later, and when his hat had blown off his head at the moment of Lyn’s accident. There was an accumulation of other things like these throughout the years; I remember them all.
Stephen, a hardy cane farmer from the bush himself, had thought this might be a strange concept for a rough bloke like me to digest. But he needn’t have worried—this was all something that I already knew and accepted. I had never doubted that Steve and I shared a special connection, an energy. So I didn’t find it unusual at all and I was pleased to know that he had recognised it too.
Stephen asked if I would like to see some old home movies of Steve and me back in the eighties, from our contract catching years. These were those first amateur films that Steve had recorded on his home video recorder. Stephen explained that over the years he had guarded these tapes with his life, keeping them under lock and key, against a barrage of media types trying to get their hands on the earliest moments of the Crocodile Hunter. The videos had never seen the light of day. ‘No matter how much money I was offered, I wouldn’t even consider it,’ he said. I respected that immensely about the Accornero family. They don’t make them much better than that—just really good people, whom we’d been lucky to meet all those years ago. They’d let us spend a lot of time on their property and they’d bent over backwards to help us. They hadn’t needed to do any of it. But they did.
I thought Stephen might have a short video or two, but there was hours of footage. I sat all afternoon glued to the television, watching tape after tape of a twenty-two-year-old Steve in navy-blue overalls and a terrible mullet haircut, his beloved dog Chilli by his side.
As self-protection, I never watch Steve on television. I choose not to remember the date he passed. So when I felt an ache in my heart the first time I heard his familiar voice on those tapes, I wasn’t certain I’d make it through the stack beside the VHS player. But curiosity pushed me on—I had never seen this precious footage before. And there we were again, enthusiastically scanning the banks of Cattle Creek’s tributaries from our humble dinghy, happier than a couple of pigs in mud. I laughed aloud with him as he deviously sprang a crocodile trap with me inside, as I lined it with a rotten pig’s leg. ‘Bloody hell, I’m ankle-deep in live rice. Get me out, turkey!’ I called to him as maggots teemed into my socks.
As the tapes rolled, I watched him come of age as he honed and cultivated his skills with each capture of a gargantuan crocodile. I cringed to watch some of the outrageous things he’d done, including the bit where Cookie had nearly bitten his foot clean off. It brought back a lot of good memories, and a lot of sombre ones too. I saw him take his younger sister Mandy out in the dinghy on one of her holidays up there; he was thrilled to take her into his world, and watched her sitting up the front of the boat, grinning from ear to ear, giving two big thumbs-up, as they checked traps together. I saw his film of the little ceremony he’d held for Chilli, the camera panning across her fresh grave, a mound rising from the ground. ‘See you later, my small dog,’ he said to the camera, struggling to get the words out. ‘One day we’ll be pig-hunting together again.’
But the thing that got to me most were the videos of his captures, as he worked alone on Cattle Creek, narrating to the camera. ‘Dad, have a go at this, what do you think of that top jaw rope?’ he said. And, ‘Hey, Dad, I’ve got this now,’ pleased as punch after one of his first solo captures. ‘You should stick to catching butterflies and lizards back at the park and leave the crocodiles to me!’
As he spoke to me through the camera, and across the years, I sud
denly realised that those films had been made for me as he’d camped out there alone and I was back at the zoo. I felt the closest I’d felt to him in a long while. He’d known that I’d watch them sometime; at some stage I’d see what he had so desperately wanted to show me. And I was finally seeing it now, when I most needed to, thirty years later. He’d always sought my tick of approval, and he had it more than he would ever know. I couldn’t help but respond to him as though he was talking directly to me through the screen, as if he was actually there.
Stephen, watching the films beside me in his lounge room, eventually turned to me, his voice full of emotion, and said, ‘Steve always said that the tapes were made to show to you if anything ever happened to him. If he mucked up he wanted you to know what he’d done wrong! Those films were always meant for you, his dad.’
My stay ended with a visit to what I’ll always know as Camp Chilli, where it all began. Even after all this time, Stephen and his wife still preserved it exactly as it had been, in memory of Steve. I was fighting off tears as Stephen navigated his Landcruiser across his family property, and as I glanced at him I could see he was too. We passed through locked gates that weren’t there before, and a decoy dirt track: basic security measures the family had put in place to stop the public accessing Steve’s camp and defacing it. After his death, people had discourteously gone looking.
I had finally returned to the place where I felt closest to my son. I reminisced about what we went through as a couple of pretty raw crocodile hunters, and felt proud to consider what we had achieved in the long term. The old lean-to I had built him had since blown over in a cyclone, but I didn’t have a problem with that. Nature had done its thing and now it was a home for reptiles seeking shelter in the crevices of the iron sheets that lay there in a heap. I made out the two rusty nails where the Camp Chilli sign once used to hang.
Once I’d taken it all in, I made my way alone down to the mangrove-lined bank of the creek, and sat beside the boat ramp where we used to launch from, and had a quiet word with my Steve. Nothing had changed as my eyes panned across the creek, except that he was no longer around. It pained my heart to realise I had never been here without him. But as I sat there, tears rolling down my aged wrinkly face, I felt his warm presence reassuringly all around me, among the sandflies’ nasty but familiar stings. His presence was really, really strong. I could hear his laughter echoing out on the water, see him climbing trees to set the bag traps, smell our campfire burning. Quietly talking to him in my mind, as I often do, I could hear him respond in my head, as clear as day, telling me that he was glad I had come back to him. ‘I’m still camping out here, Dad, with Chilli by my side. It’ll always be our special place. You and I will always have Cattle Creek.’