by Terri Irwin
He gave me a sly grin. “Ah, yes,” he said, satisfied with his paternity (as if there was ever any doubt!). We had ourselves an L.A. baby.
I visited the doctor. “This is a first for me,” I said. “What do I do?”
“Just keep doing what you would normally do,” the doctor said. “It’s probably not a good time to take up skydiving, but it would be fine to carry on with your usual activities.” I was thrilled to get Dr. Michael’s advice. He had been the Irwin family doctor for years, and he definitely understood what our lifestyle entailed. I embarked on an ambitious schedule of filmmaking.
We named the life growing inside me “Igor.” Steve and I were both sure we were having a boy. Both my sisters had boys, and somehow, Igor just seemed to fit. With Igor on board, it was ironic that our first documentary journey, to Tasmania, involved a family tragedy of epic proportions. Tasmania, the island off the southern coast of Australia, has unique wildlife and spectacular, temperate-zone rain forests. But as soon as we arrived, Steve and I were swept up in a whale beaching that was emotionally harrowing.
In a remote area on the western side of the island, near the town of Marrawah, a pod of sperm whales was stranded on the beach. One big male came to shore first. Over the next twenty-four hours, another thirty-four whales stranded themselves, including calves and pregnant mothers.
Whale stranding is one of the heartbreaking mysteries of the animal world. It is little understood. At this moment no scientific reasoning mattered as we encountered the tragedy unfolding on that Tasmanian beach.
I felt so helpless. All I could do was be there as the huge, gorgeous sea mammals fought pitifully to stay alive. The weather was cold, even though it was officially the Tasmanian summer, and the seas were too rough to get a boat out to help the whales. We put our arms around the dying animals, spoke to them, and looked into their eyes to share in their pain and grief. By the end of the day I was so cold that I had trouble getting my pants off over my pregnant belly. It took me half an hour of struggling in the car park to strip off my soaking-wet clothes and get into some warm, dry gear. Physically, emotionally, and even spiritually, it had been an exhausting day.
I pondered what communication the baby inside me would have gotten from the event. The dying whales had sung among themselves. Steve and I spoke back and forth over their stranded bodies. What did baby Igor pick up on? Through our experiences, we were beginning to form our very own tiny wildlife warrior, even before the baby was born. Igor had only just begun his education. We left the beach to track Tasmanian snakes inland. Steve was feeling particularly protective of me.
“Whatever you do, don’t grab any of these snakes,” he said. “They are all venomous here in Tasmania. You are pregnant and you’ve got to be careful.”
“No problem,” I said. But it did turn out to be difficult just to watch. Over and over again, Steve got to wrangle a gorgeous venomous snake as the crew filmed. I wanted some of the action!
After a few days of this, we tramped through the bush and encountered a great big tiger snake. It glistened in the sun at the edge of a stream. Steve turned around and motioned to the cameraman to start rolling. We made minimal movements and whispered, even though snakes have no ears and can’t hear (instead they sense vibrations).
We approached the tiger snake as it drank in the stream. It raised its head slightly. It knew we were there. My heart started pounding, but I had made a decision. I knew we had one take with this snake. Once we disturbed it, it would never go back to drinking, and the shot would be lost.
I moved forward, waddling my pregnant body in behind the snake, and tailed him. He was a huge snake, but slow and gentle, just as I had anticipated. I told the camera all about tigers, how they could give birth to thirty young at once, and how the Tasmanian tiger snakes are special, tolerating some of the coldest weather in the country.
As I let the snake go, I looked sheepishly back at Steve. His eyes had grown large, and he didn’t say a word. I’m not entirely sure if he was angry with me. I think he realized that I was still the same old Terri, even though I was pregnant.
Maybe it was my condition, but I was even more sensitive about cruelty to wildlife. When we journeyed to New Zealand to protest whale hunts, we viewed a documentary about whales attacking the whaling ships, trying to defend the females and their young. Whales are like elephants of the sea. They have family structures, mannerisms, and habits that are similar to our own.
In the midst of this very emotional work in Wellington, I felt the baby move for the first time. Soon the baby was dancing around inside me both day and night. All my checkups came back favorable, and the doctor said Steve was more than welcome to glove up and help deliver the baby when the time came.
Until then, though, there was stacks of filming to be done. We filmed sharks just off the Queensland coast, near where Steve’s parents had retired. Some of the crew were typical Aussie blokes. As soon as I got on board and they saw that I was very obviously pregnant, they decided to embark on “Project Spew.” To attract sharks, they mixed up a large container of chum—a gory stew made of fish oil, blood, fish skeletons, and offal. The crew would pass it right underneath my nose in an effort to make me sick. I countered them by sitting down and eating lunch right next to the putrid-smelling chum container. I knew they couldn’t break me!
We then headed for the Galapagos Islands, my last international trip before giving birth. Once I got back I would be too pregnant to fly. I would be grounded until the baby came.
We had to travel through Ecuador to get to the Galapagos Islands, and we stopped overnight in Quito on the way. It was a real culture shock to check in and discover that the doorman was packing a .357. Although I always felt safe with Steve, we had to be particularly careful where we filmed. At one point, shooting near a river, Steve turned to me and said, “Run for the van. Don’t walk—run. And don’t look back.”
I waddled as fast as my fat little legs would carry me. When I’d reached the safety of the van, I took a chance and looked back. I could see a semicircle of local men closing in on the cameraman and crew. It occurred to me that our camera could probably buy the entire village. It was obviously a mistake to flash around so much expensive gear. Steve managed to get everyone into the van, and we sped off in the nick of time.
When we finally reached the Galapagos Islands, we stayed on the water in a catamaran. I was completely unprepared for the heat. Even on the boat there wasn’t a breeze. The entire crew slept above deck. They were the smart ones. I was so hot that somehow Steve and John managed to negotiate for some ice. They’d take turns filling a washcloth with ice to cool down my giant tummy. There was an entire day when the baby didn’t move, and I was worried. But everything was fine the next day, and I think Igor had just spread out like the rest of us, trying to keep cool.
The last filming I did while pregnant with baby Igor was off the Australian coast again, for a documentary on sharks. I was almost to the point where I couldn’t go out on the boat anymore. I was so pregnant, I felt incredibly uncomfortable on the rolling seas. The constant bouncing of the boat was literally stretching my cervix. I went out for one last trip and spent most of my time lying on my side, holding my enormous belly.
Steve knew the sharks intimately by now. “The big tiger sharks will show up at eleven o’clock,” he said. And sure enough, they did, right on the dot. We had the shark cage and the dinghy, with myself (and Igor), Steve, and Sui.
I sat in the dingy and watched the enormous tigers as they circled around. They had to be more than fourteen feet long, and some of them were larger than the boat itself. I quickly figured out that because of my great belly I was very unbalanced. I had to be careful so as not to tip the boat. Sui was an old hand at all of this. She planted herself in the center of the boat and lay down, sticking to the safest spot possible.
Steve enjoyed going into the cage. The sharks came up to him one by one, trying to open this strange container and get to the nice yummy food inside.
>
“They have a childlike curiosity,” he told me, breaking to the surface before lowering himself down again. “They’re really trying to figure out how to get me!”
I got to experience them on the surface, in the dinghy. Tiger sharks don’t just feed under the water. They readily take food off the surface, too, and even lift themselves partially out of the water. Huge tiger sharks, wider across than I was (which at that point was saying a lot) came up to taste the boat, taste the motor, and put their heads all the way over the back of the dinghy.
I was fascinated and had to stop myself from reaching out and stroking them. Of course I didn’t dare move, because I needed to counterbalance the boat, so the sharks wouldn’t rock it over. After a day of filming, my opinion of sharks was even better. Steve was right. Bringing people into close proximity to wildlife was all you had to do. I fell in love with tiger sharks that day. As it turned out, that was the last documentary of my pregnancy. For the next few weeks I’d be restricted to working at the zoo.
Steve, on the other hand, had time to squeeze in one more doco. He and John headed to Indonesia to film Komodo dragons. Steve found one dragon with a fishhook in its mouth. The line was trailing alongside the eight-foot lizard, and Steve decided to help. He got in front of the huge predator and pulled until the hook popped free. It was at that moment that the dragon clicked. He homed in on Steve, raised his head, and gave chase. The Komodo was serious. Steve managed to scramble up a small tree, with the dragon at his feet. Luckily, it was just too big to climb well and only grabbed Steve on the boot.
Steve turned to the camera. “Danger, danger, danger!” was all he could get out. The Komodo dragon carries about sixteen types of bacteria in the long strings of drool that hang from its mouth. All it needs to do is break the skin, and its prey will die of infection. Although the dragon’s tooth had sliced all the way through Steve’s boot, it didn’t penetrate his sock or his foot. “I’d rather take a hit from an eight-foot saltie than an eight-foot dragon,” Steve said later.
When Steve made it home safe and sound, I encouraged my tummy, “Hurry up and be born, Igor, so we can hit the road again.”
One evening Steve and I didn’t feel like cooking, and we had ordered a pizza. I noticed that I was a bit leaky, but when you are enormously pregnant, all kinds of weird things happen with your body. I didn’t pay any particular attention. The next day I called the hospital.
“You should come right in,” the nurse told me over the phone. Steve was fairly nearby, on the Gold Coast south of Brisbane, filming bull sharks.
I won’t bother him, I thought. I’ll just go in for a quick checkup.
“If everything checks out okay,” I told them at the hospital, “I’ll just head back.”
The nurse looked to see if I was serious. She laughed. “You’re not going anywhere,” she said. “You’re having a baby.”
I called Steve. He came up from the Gold Coast as quickly as he could, after losing his car keys, not remembering where he parked, and forgetting which way home was in his excitement.
When he arrived at the hospital, I saw that he had brought the whole camera crew with him. John was just as flustered as anyone but suggested we film the event.
“It’s okay with me,” Steve said. I was in no mood to argue. I didn’t care if a spaceship landed on the hospital. Each contraction took every bit of my attention.
When they finally wheeled me into the delivery room at about eight o’clock that night, I was so tired I didn’t know how I could go on. Steve proved to be a great coach. He encouraged me as though it were a footy game.
“You can do it, babe,” he yelled. “Come on, push!”
At 9:46 p.m., a little head appeared. Steve was beside himself with excitement. I was in a fog, but I clearly remember the joy on his face. He helped turn and lift the baby out. I heard both Steve and doctor announce simultaneously, “It’s a girl.”
Six pounds and two ounces of little baby girl. She was early but she was fine. All pink and perfect.
Steve cut the umbilical cord and cradled her, gazing down at his newborn daughter. “Look, she’s our little Bindi.”
She was named after a crocodile at the zoo, and it also fit that the word “bindi” was Aboriginal for “young girl.” Here was our own young girl, our little Bindi.
I smiled up at Steve. “Bindi Sue,” I said, after his beloved dog, Sui.
Steve gently handed her to me. We both looked down at her in utter amazement. He suddenly scooped her up in the towels and blankets and bolted off.
“I’ve got a baby girl!” he yelled, as he headed down the hall. The doctor and midwives were still attending to me. After a while, one of the midwives said nervously, “So, is he coming back?”
I just laughed. I knew what Steve was doing. He was showing off his beautiful baby girl to the whole maternity ward, even though each and every new parent had their own bundle of joy. Steve was such a proud parent.
He came back and laid Bindi beside me. I said, “I couldn’t have done it if you hadn’t been here.”
“Yes, you could have.”
“No, I really needed you here.”
Once again, I had that overwhelming feeling that as long as we were together, everything would be safe and wonderful. I watched Bindi as she stared intently at her daddy with dark, piercing eyes. He gazed back at her and smiled, tears rolling down his cheeks, with such great love for his new daughter. The world had a brand-new wildlife warrior.
Chapter Twelve
The Crocodile Kid
Stephen Robert Irwin was born in Upper Ferntree Gully, outside of Melbourne, in 1962, on his mother’s birthday, February 22.
Lynette and Robert Irwin—the people I always knew more familiarly as Lyn and Bob—exposed him to wildlife at an early age. Steve always described his household growing up as harboring a “menagerie.” That meant an ever-expanding collection of tanks, terrariums, and cages with an ever-growing population of snakes and lizards.
Bob made an excellent living for his family as a plumber, but his true love was reptiles. Lyn was a maternity nurse, and she had a natural love of nurturing. She didn’t limit herself to reptiles. She took in injured animals of all kinds.
On his sixth birthday, Steve received a scrub python as a gift from his parents. “Fred the scrubby was my best friend growing up,” Steve said. “The problem was, he was so big, and I was still little. He could have eaten me without a worry.”
Lyn and Bob moved their family north from the Melbourne area to Queensland in 1970. They purchased the original four-acre zoo property in Beerwah after a snake-finding trip. Eight-year-old Steve and his sisters, Joy and Mandy, helped install the family menagerie in what was at first called the Beerwah Reptile Park. The beautifully landscaped zoo grounds that I first encountered more than two decades later had originally started out as a cattle paddock.
Joy was the older sister, Mandy the younger, and Steve was in the middle. There were periods when the family lived in a caravan parked on the reptile park’s grounds. Steve got along well with his sisters, and the usual sibling rivalry expressed itself in who could better care for the menagerie of animals taken in by the family. The study of wildlife was a household passion. Bob loved all reptiles, even venomous snakes. Lyn took in the injured and orphaned. They made a great team, and Steve was born directly from their example and teaching.
“Whenever we were driving,” Steve told me, “if we saw a kangaroo on the side of the roadway that had been killed by a car, we always stopped.” Mother and son would investigate the dead roo and, if it was female, check its pouch. They rescued dozens, maybe hundreds, of live kangaroo joeys this way, brought them home, and raised them.
“We had snakes and goannas mostly, but also orphaned roo joeys, sugar gliders, and possums,” Steve said about these humble beginnings. “We didn’t have enclosures for crocodiles. That came later, after my parents became sick to death of the hatred they saw directed toward crocs.”
I soon became awa
re that as much as Steve loved his parents equally, he got different things from each of them. Bob was his hero, his mentor, the man he wanted to become. Bob’s knowledge of reptile—and especially snake—behavior made him an invaluable resource for academics all over the country. The Queensland Museum wanted to investigate the ways of the secretive fierce snake, and Bob shared their passion. When the administrators of the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service wanted to relocate problem crocodilians, they called Bob.
Meanwhile, Lyn became, in Steve’s words, “the Mother Teresa of animal rescue.” Lyn designed a substitute pouch for orphaned roo and wallaby joeys. She came up with appropriate formulas to feed them too. Lyn created the warm, nurturing environment that made Steve’s dreams, goals, and aspirations real and reachable. Steve was always a boy who loved his mum, and Lyn was the matriarch of the family. While Bob and Steve were fearless around taipans and saltwater crocs, they had the utmost respect for Lyn. She was a pioneering wildlife rehabilitator who set the mark for both Steve and myself.
From the very first, I was welcomed into the Irwin family. The greatest thing was that I felt Lyn and Bob loved me not just because I was married to Steve, but for myself, for who I was. That gave me confidence to feel at home as a new arrival to Australia.
“He was a little monster,” Bob said, laughing, about Steve as a child. The main difficulty wasn’t unruly behavior. It was Steve’s insatiable curiosity about the bush and the wildlife in it.
“For the first few months, when he was a baby, I could put Steve down and he would stay where I put him,” Lyn told me. “But after he started to get around on his own, it was all over. I would find him either on the roof or up in some tree.”
When the family headed off on a trip, usually to North Queensland on wildlife jaunts, Steve could always be counted on to be elsewhere when they were ready to go. They would find him next to the nearest stream, snagging yabbies or turning over bits of wood to see what was hidden underneath.