The Last Crocodile Hunter
Page 32
Epilogue
Amanda French
Koolatah Station, Cape York, September 2015
It’s only when you’ve eaten your last bit of long-life cheese, and you’re down to boiling stagnant river water for drinking, that you start to think of heading home. But you delay it as long as you can, because packing up camp is one of the least exciting tasks of the trip, hands down. By this stage, everything is covered in red Cape York dust. And no matter how early you rise to beat the scorching heat, it always creeps up on you. The heat is inescapable; you can’t outsmart it in Far North Queensland. It’s only at this point, for the very first time on the trip, that home seems too far away, as you contemplate the days on the road that lie ahead, those long stretches of corrugated gravel covered in bull dust between here and there.
The homeward stretch always feels worlds apart from the original journey north. Leaving the bush when you’re only just starting to feel a connection to it never feels good. For me, I’m all too aware that I’m heading back to the city and losing some of that like-mindedness that I’ve shared with people out here in a very remote part of the Australian bush. We’ve spent the last three weeks exploring this landscape with the walking encyclopaedia that is Bob Irwin. We’ve had balmy nights meditating under a blanket of stars atop a sand dune, listening to crocodiles snapping up fish for dinner below us. In those moments, when your mind is empty, you start to truly understand the idea of feeling at one with nature.
Thankfully that feeling lasts a wee bit longer: when you’re travelling with Bob, you don’t take the well-trodden path to your destination, you always take the quietest backroad where passing another vehicle is a novelty. He likes to camp on the side of the road there and light a campfire wherever he damn well pleases. Bob will never stay at a caravan park. To him tourists are only noisemakers disturbing his sought-after remoteness. The fewer people, the more isolated, the better. This of course poses a challenge for Judy, who always manages to pack enough food to last us—because out here there sure aren’t any supermarkets.
But this time, leaving this special place with Bob fills me with a particular sadness. I realise the older he gets, the fewer trips like this he has left in him. At seventy-seven years of age, it’s just a fact of life that before too long he won’t be scaling rocky cliffs in forty-degree heat or navigating his rig over the far north’s less travelled roads.
We pack up in silence. We don’t really want to leave, but it’s time. We fold up the camping table—the same one he used to take out camping in the early days with Lyn—and hook it on the camper trailer. It’s tied down with the same old piece of canvas Bob always uses to protect his rig from the dust on the roads. The canvas came off Steve’s old truck. Before he gets into the truck to drive away, he takes off his leather knife belt, a handmade gift from Steve, and slides it beneath his seat for safekeeping. These relics are almost sacred to Bob—he has to have them on every single trip. They’re pieces of the good old days coming along with him.
A slow pace is all we can manage as we travel the fifty kilometres back to the homestead of the station we’ve been camping on. It’s a dry thirty-six degrees Celsius outside the truck. As I look around the inside of the vehicle I laugh to myself at his devotion to Toyota Landcruisers. He drives a newer model these days, but the aesthetics of the vehicle haven’t evolved much over the years. There’s not too much in the way of flash screens, buttons or technology that Bob would just consider a hindrance. Technology that he can’t get his head around always gets threatened to go under the back wheel of his truck. It’s just a new version of the tried and tested car he’s always loved. That is so like him too. He doesn’t waver much from his old values, beliefs or routines. It’s still meat and three veg for dinner, he’ll always read a map over a GPS, and he refuses to wash out the teapot for fear it will lose the essential brewed-tea taste.
I wonder how it must have felt to pack up after one of the croc camps with the old Australia Zoo crew. How exhausted they must have been, and how much they must have looked forward to having a proper shower, to sleeping in the comfort of their own beds and not needing to compete with the sandflies for their own skin. I also contemplate how those memories must feel to them now that the dream team has dispersed. But there’s no doubt that they’ll always be tied together with the most skilful bush knot of their shared experiences. Because bush knots that Bob ties rarely come undone.
We pull up at the station to have a cup of tea with the property’s managers, Alby and Andrew. We park behind a cattle truck, from which one thousand head of wild cattle are being unloaded with an electric cattle prod. We always like to share with Alby and Andrew some of the adventures we’ve had camping on their property. We tell them about the black-throated finches we’ve seen, and other rare birds, and the snakes that have slithered across our path. Their focus is primarily on running cattle so they rarely venture to some of the areas we’ve explored, and they’re only too happy to learn more about their land, the way we’ve been looking at it with the wildlife in our eyes.
Alby greets us at the front gate along with a horde of excitable kids who’re staying with them for the school holidays. These are bush kids: they get engrossed in the cattle muster, swim in crocodile-infested rivers and travel far from their families to boarding schools for a chance at a decent education. School holidays are when they get to return home to do what they love: be in the great outdoors. These kids were living in a remote area, but were far from sheltered. Out here was the authentic school of life.
As we stand talking with Alby, a young blond boy emerges to say hello. As Alby introduces him as his ten-year-old nephew Parker, the boy’s eyes fall on Bob’s name embroidered on his trademark khaki shirt. ‘Bob Ir-win,’ he sounds out. Suddenly his face lights up. ‘I know a guy called Steve Irwin from the TV! He catches these really big crocodiles. I’ve got all of his DVDs.’
We all look amused and Bob laughs.
‘Parker, this man here is actually Steve Irwin’s dad,’ says Alby.
‘Awe-some!’ Parker slowly exclaims, eyes as wide as can be.
‘I bet if you looked closely at some of those DVDs you’d see old Bob,’ Alby says.
‘Really?’
‘Oh, yeah, I was somewhere there, scratchin’ around in the background,’ Bob says.
Quick as a flash Parker is off, the other kids following him, as he shouts out, ‘Let’s go and find Bob on TV!’
Bob lit up. Here we are on a very remote property in Cape York that sees little interaction the outside world: the mail plane delivers their food, there’re no shops, and visitors are infrequent, particularly those with recognisable surnames. The impact that encounter would have had on Parker was enormous. More importantly, the impact that Parker had on Bob was even more profound. Ten years ago, as little Parker’s life was beginning, Steve left this world. But his message will live on forever, immortalised in the documentaries he made and his contagious enthusiasm for wildlife.
Wherever we go, people seek Bob out to tell him how Steve inspired them to follow their passion or changed their perception of wildlife. He never reveals how difficult it is for him to hear this at times, to constantly be reminded of what he’s lost. Instead he lets each and every person have all the time they need to share these stories. He always enthusiastically listens.
As Koolatah Station disappears behind us in a cloud of dust, Bob finally speaks, eyes still fixed forwards. ‘Far North Queensland is where I feel most connected to Steve.’
Once the lump clears from my throat enough to let me speak, I turn to Bob and ask him something I’ve long wanted to know. ‘Bob, would you do it all over again? Have you got one more croc trip left in you? I’m not talking about just observing them, I’m talking about catching monstrous salties again. Being in charge of the team. You’re the last of the original crocodile hunters. Have you still got it in you?’
He pauses, then a smile creeps up one corner of his mouth. He rolls a cigarette with one hand, the other on
the wheel. ‘Amanda, there are things that, no matter how old I get, I never stop thinking about. I’m getting a bit long in the tooth now, but while I can still walk, my heart will always beat for crocodiles. Those years were the best times of my entire life. Would I want to catch crocodiles again? You betcha!’
We drove on, homeward bound for Camp Chilli, telling each other lies, getting ourselves lost at forks in the road, and writing this story.
Les, Mum and Aunty Kath and the two little horrors in the front, Ron and me. I admired my stepfather, Les.
Mum, Grandma, Ron and I down at Point Lonsdale, out fishing. I used to make those fishing poles out of rangoon cane.
At the church on our wedding day in Essendon. Lyn was about to have Joy at the time this photo was taken. I had a suit and a tie too; I don’t think I owned it.
With Joy on a surf ski I made. I made my own surf skis to get further out to sea to fish. Photo taken at Port Lonsdale. It was certainly a favourite spot.
The whole family down in Essendon, Victoria.
Steve at kindy.
Primary school photo of Steve. He was actually pretty good for a boy at school. He was a little bit like me; he liked sports days better than any other days.
Steve hanging up in a tree like an orangutan.
Joy and Steve with Santa. Melbourne days.
A chip off the block. Steve loved it when I’d take him fishing as a kid.
Here’s trouble. Steve as a young fella. You wouldn’t know by looking at this photo how much energy that kid had.
Steve, Joy, Lyn, Mandy and me out the front of our Primrose Street home. The whole motley crew.
My beloved FJ Holden. I loved that car and also the chick (Lyn) who’s sitting on it.
Some of the first wild freshies I caught on an early field trip to the Leichhardt River with my best friend, Peter Haskins. PHOTO COURTESY OF PETER HASKINS
Steve, Mandy, Lyn, Joy and me outside the brick veneer house I built for the family inside the reptile park.
A rare photo of Lyn and me out of khaki.
Steve with a rescued platypus that came in from Beerwah—a local farmer was cleaning the mud out of his dam and came across this little guy. We kept it for a while and then found a nice area to release him. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
Steve navigating the rainforests of Far North Queensland as a young man. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
A typical sight in the Irwin household. One of our orphaned brushtail possums chewing on my ear, having the run of the place. PHOTO COURTESY OF PETER HASKINS
A favourite pastime of anyone in the family was giving Harriet a scratch. What a special animal she was. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
Me and Lyn with Fred the python. The first snake that we purchased for Steve, for his sixth birthday. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
Lyn, Mandy and me at home in the reptile park. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
Steve with his two sisters, Mandy and Joy. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
Lyn, Harriet and me. She was just a part of the family. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
Me with a green python, a species from the tropics Steve and I had a fascination with. PHOTO COURTESY OF NOEL AND JILL PECK
Bringing our first wild caught Perentie back to the reptile park. We became very successful in breeding these monitors. PHOTO COURTESY OF PETER HASKINS.
Lyn and me at Steve and Terri’s wedding in America in 1992. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
Steve and me feeding the crocs for the public, back at the reptile park. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
A typical photo of Lyn, never without a critter. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
Noel trying to teach me how to play the guitar on a six-week camping trip to some fairly remote parts of Cape York. Noel had written a song that night about time on the road with us, called ‘Please, Mr Irwin, I Don’t Wanna Go . . .’ PHOTO COURTESY OF NOEL AND JILL PECK
Steve feeding a large saltwater crocodile for patrons. I was initially hesitant about him getting in with the crocs but, as usual, he was right. The croc demos became a centrepiece of the park. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
Peter Haskins on one of our field trips to Windorah where we were filming monitor lizards for a documentary. PHOTO COURTESY OF PETER HASKINS.
Out in the channel country in Windorah holding an inland monitor lizard with filmmaker Vic Martin. PHOTO COURTESY OF PETER HASKINS
Digging out the earth ponds for a new section of our park—the crocodile environmental park. Ready for crocs rescued from Far North Queensland on our contract catching permit. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
Peter Haskins, Steve and me exploring the Far North. PHOTO COURTESY OF PETER HASKINS
A day off from crocodile catching at Crystal Creek in Far North Queensland. Steve and his best friend, Chilli. She went everywhere with him. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
On the boat on the way to Komodo Island to see the incredible Komodo dragons. PHOTO COURTESY OF PETER HASKINS
Holding a specimen of the Elseya irwini (Irwin’s Turtle) on the Burdekin River where it was discovered. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
Steve and Chilli getting a croc processed for transport down on Cattle Creek. All in a day’s work. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
Stephen Accornero with Acco after his capture down on Cattle Creek in the late 1980s. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ACCORNERO FAMILY
Steve at the helm of his crocodile-catching dinghy on Cattle Creek. Mangrove mud everywhere, as usual. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
Mandy loved heading up to spend time with her big brother catching crocodiles on Cattle Creek. Chilli always had right of way in the boat. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
The original Camp Chilli at Cattle Creek, with the handmade sign that I made for Steve after he lost his beloved companion Chilli. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ACCORNERO FAMILY
Steve and me securing top jaw ropes on the crocodile before it comes out of the trap. I’m up on top in case the crocodile runs forward and I need to shut the gate quickly to prevent Steve from sustaining an injury. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
Steve and I often worked at the head of the crocodile together. It was always our favourite job. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
Navigating our crocodile-catching gear into the Nesbit River was a real challenge. The washed-out tracks certainly made it a rough ride in. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
Steve and me when we weren’t covered in mud. A sure sign that we weren’t catching crocodiles when this photo was taken. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
A treasured shot of Steve and me on the job towing a floating trap towards the bank with a crocodile inside ready for processing. Taken in Lakefield National Park. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
Lefty and me on the North Kennedy River. This crocodile had just been caught in a soft-mesh bag trap and we’re sorting out how to get the top jaw ropes on. This can often take a fair amount of time. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
The croc team working in Lakefield National Park on the Bizant River. All hands, or bodies, on deck. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
Steve and me at the head of the crocodile, with the rest of the team hanging on for dear life as the crocodile builds up and thrashes everybody around like rag dolls. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
Planning our first journey into the remote Nesbit River region. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
Steve, Dan and Kyle, using three top jaw ropes in a triangle so as to have better control. Surprisingly, Kyle, at the head of the croc, is in the safest position. Being side on to a crocodile is the most precarious position in this particular situation. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
On Croc One, on the North Kennedy River. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
Bindi, Steve and me on the North Kennedy River at Lakefield with a little crocodile we’ve caught ready for processing. Steve loved getting the kids involved as much as possible. His favourite job was being a dad. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
Steve, Judy and a koala joey named Squeaky out at Ironbark Station. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
Judy and baby Burrow, not long after he came to live with us at Ironbark Station. The beginning of Judy’s fascination with wombats. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
Judy and me at our wedding in the kangaroo enclosure at Austral
ia Zoo. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
The extended family at our wedding. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO
Steve got a shock to see me turn up to the launch of his movie Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course. He was walking along and spotted me among fans and I made him sign my boarding pass. He wrote something rude, which was typical Steve. I’ve still got that piece of paper. IRWIN FAMILY PHOTO