Steve & Me

by Terri Irwin

  Once again, Wes organized animals for the Los Angeles premiere of Crocodile Hunter. We had a red carpet like no other. Steve, Bindi, and I came down it on an elephant. Wes brought in a giraffe, cheetahs, and an alligator. Steve climbed up on the elephant alone, and the trainer had her rear straight up in the air. The pictures were priceless.

  All our promotional work paid off. Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course grossed more in the first weekend than the cost of filming. The movie promotion had been a hard slog, so after we got back home we planned a more leisurely getaway to Singapore and the Maldive Islands.

  Steve loved the Singapore Zoo and always considered it a sister zoo to our own. Bindi and I enjoyed being in Singapore with Steve, because he had spent so much time in Southeast Asia and really knew his way around.

  Every morning Steve would head out into the streets of Singapore and discover a new and yummy local curry for breakfast. Bindi watched her daddy carefully. She would eat her mild curry while Steve ate his spicy one. She followed along with everything that he did.

  One morning at the hotel, Bindi came out in her pajamas while I was trying to get her dressed. She was halfway there and was prancing around in her little pajama top, with no bottoms.

  Suddenly she spotted the tea set in the room and decided to make tea. I helped her out. She made green tea for all of us, carefully poured it, and took it over to Steve with a big smile, bare bottom and all.

  “When was the last time you had a girl with no underpants fix you tea?” I asked Steve, laughing.

  Without missing a beat, Steve said, “The last time I was in Singapore.”

  “You’re a dag,” I said, knowing that the last time Steve was in Singapore was before we were married. Bindi didn’t get the joke, but Steve and I laughed and laughed.

  We hit the Maldives for a surfing break. The islands are right on the equator, and the heat was incredible. Bindi didn’t understand traditional Muslim clothing. The women wore black burkas, with just a small panel to look through, and Bindi worried about them in the heat. Somewhere along the line, she had picked up some verbiage that she then blurted out loudly in the street when we encountered a heavily swathed Muslim woman.

  “Mummy, is that an oppressed woman?” Not wanting to cause an incident, I hustled us both away. I tried to explain about differences in cultures and religions, how sometimes what you wore was an indication of modesty, rather than oppression. But in the back of my mind was the thought, Out of the mouths of babes.

  Even on the road, we continued our efforts to conceive. Part of our boy-baby effort was the need to try right at the time of ovulation. I packed an ovulation kit with me everywhere. When the strip turned blue, it meant we had a twenty-four- to forty-eight-hour window to get busy.

  At first I had Steve convinced that women ovulated twenty or thirty times a month. But I couldn’t trick him forever. At some point he realized that that was impossible.

  Upon returning to Australia, we headed out to the Brigalow Belt, an endangered bush habitat that stretches from New South Wales north into Queensland. It’s named after a wattle, or tree, species, but because of intense land clearing, the whole region was in trouble.

  We had purchased eighty thousand acres to help protect this fragile environment. Steve wanted to check up on our dams, which had been built a hundred or more years ago. These dams had never before dried out. Now we were battling a severe drought that the land hadn’t seen in ages. Decades worth of silt had built up in the dams and was fifteen feet deep in places.

  While there was still water in the middle of the pools, animals attempted to reach it through the silt but would get bogged. We spent day after day checking dams, finding about eight to ten animals hopelessly mired in the silt at each and every dam, primarily kangaroos and wallabies.

  We had to get to the dams early in the morning. Some of the kangaroos had been struggling all night. Steve engineered planks and straps to rescue the animals. The silt would suck us down just as fast, so we had to be careful going out to rescue the roos. Because of the lactic acid buildup in their tissues (a product of their all-night exertions to free themselves), some of the kangaroos were too far gone and couldn’t recover. But we saved quite a few.

  At one point, Bob came out to lend a hand. I was at the homestead, and the ovulation strip turned bright blue. I hustled over to the creek bed where Steve and his dad were working.

  I motioned to Steve. “The strip is blue,” I said. He looked around nervously.

  “I’m out here working with me dad,” he said. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Just come on,” I whispered impatiently.

  “But my dad’s right here!”

  I smiled and took his hand. We headed up the dry creek bed and spent some quality time with the biting ants and the prickles.

  It was after this trip to our conservation property in the Brigalow Belt that I discovered I was pregnant. I tried to let Steve know by sitting down at the table and tucking into a bowl of ice cream and pickles.

  “What are you doing?” asked a totally confused Steve. I explained, and we were both totally overjoyed, keeping our fingers crossed for a boy to go along with our darling daughter.

  With the news that he would soon be a daddy again, Steve seemed inspired to work even harder. Our zoo continued to get busier, and we had trouble coping with the large numbers. The biggest draw was the crocodiles. Crowds poured in for the croc shows, filling up all the grandstands. The place was packed.

  Steve came up with a monumental plan. He was a big fan of the Colosseum-type arenas of the Roman gladiator days. He sketched out his idea for me on a piece of paper.

  “Have a go at this, it’s a coliseum,” he declared, his eyes wide with excitement. He drew an oval, then a series of smaller ovals in back of it. “Then we have crocodile ponds where the crocs could live. Every day a different croc could come out for the show and swim through a canal system”—he sketched rapidly—“then come out in the main area.”

  “Canals,” I said. “Could you get them to come in on cue?”

  “Piece of cake!” he said. “And get this! We call it…the Crocoseum!”

  His enthusiasm was contagious. Never mind that nothing like this had ever been done before. Steve was determined to take the excitement and hype of the ancient Roman gladiators and combine it with the need to show people just how awesome crocs really were.

  But it was a huge project. There was nothing to compare it to, because nothing even remotely similar had ever been attempted anywhere in the world. I priced it out: The budget to build the arena would have to be somewhere north of eight million dollars, a huge expense. Wes, John, Frank, and I all knew we’d have to rely on Steve’s knowledge of crocodiles to make this work.

  Steve’s enthusiasm never waned. He was determined. This would become the biggest structure at the zoo. The arena would seat five thousand and have space beneath it for museums, shops, and a food court. The center of the arena would have land areas large enough for people to work around crocodiles safely and water areas large enough for crocs to be able to access them easily.

  “How is this going to work, Steve?” I asked, after soberly assessing the cost. What if we laid out more than eight million dollars and the crocodiles decided not to cooperate? “How are you going to convince a crocodile to come out exactly at showtime, try to kill and eat the keeper, and then go back home again?”

  I bit my tongue when I realized what was coming out of my mouth: advice on crocodiles directed at the world’s expert on croc behavior. Steve was right with his philosophy: Build it, and they will come.

  These were heady times. As the Crocoseum rose into the sky, my tummy got bigger and bigger with our new baby. It felt like I was expanding as rapidly as the new project.

  The Crocoseum debuted during an Animal Planet live feed, its premiere beamed all over the world. The design was a smashing success. Once again, Steve had confounded the doubters.

  We decided we didn’t really want to know
if we were having a boy or a girl. “Why would you want to know?” I said. “The amount of work you go through in labor—at least you have something to work toward, a big surprise, the payoff at the end.”

  “Oh, I never found labor difficult at all,” Steve said with a grin. “Sometimes it was painful when you would squeeze my hand a bit hard, but other than that…”

  He never got a chance to finish. I attacked him. He rolled around the floor, laughing.

  At one point, we were in the kitchen talking when, out of the blue, Steve changed the subject. “If we have another little girl,” Steve asked, “would you go again?”

  “Absolutely,” I said, without hesitation. “Bindi is the joy of our lives. I’m sure this little baby will be the same. Boy or girl, I’d go again.”

  It was a Sunday at the end of November, which meant summertime in Australia. My water broke at night, and this time I knew what was coming. I remember thinking, There’s no turning back now. Immediately after my water broke, the contractions started. I had been sleeping in Bindi’s room because I was so awkward and uncomfortable that I kept waking everybody up. Plus, Bindi loved being able to snuggle down in bed with her daddy.

  I crept into their room quietly. As I stood beside the bed, I leaned in next to Steve’s ear. I could feel his breath. He smelled warm and sweet and familiar. He is going to be a daddy again, I thought, his favorite job in the world.

  When I whispered “Steve,” he opened his eyes without moving. Bindi slept on at his side. It was about midnight, and I told Steve that we didn’t have to leave for the hospital yet, but it would be soon. Once he was satisfied that I was okay, I headed back to Bindi’s bed to get some rest.

  Throughout our life together, I never knew what Steve was going to say next. True to form, he came to my bedside, not long after I lay down, and said, “I’m putting my foot down.”

  “What?”

  “The baby is going to be named Robert Clarence Irwin if it’s a boy,” he said. Robert after his dad, Bob, and Clarence after my dad.

  “You don’t need to put your foot down,” I whispered to him. “I think it’s a beautiful name.”

  When my contractions were four minutes apart, I knew it was time to head to the hospital. It was five o’clock in the morning. Steve got everything organized to take me. Of course, one of the things he grabbed was a camera. He was determined that we would capture everything on film. We called Trevor, our friend and cinematographer who had filmed Bindi’s birth, to meet us at the hospital, and Thelma, Bindi’s nanny, came over to get her off to school.

  As we drove in the car, Steve filmed me from the driver’s seat. As he shot, the Ute slowly edged toward the side of the road. He looked up, grabbed the wheel, and corrected the steering. Then he went back to filming and the whole thing happened again. After two or three veers, I had had enough.

  “Stop filming,” I yelled. He quickly put the camera down. I think he realized that this was no time to argue with mama bear.

  At the hospital, an attendant brought down a wheelchair for me. Steve somehow managed, without a forklift, to get me out of the truck and into the wheelchair. The birth progressed a lot faster than it had with Bindi. I wasn’t worried because I had Steve with me, and I knew everything would be fine, as long as we were together.

  I pushed like an Olympic baby pusher. I should have gotten the gold for my pushing. I think I pushed until I was nearly inside out.

  The baby came. Steve said, “It’s a boy!” and brought him to me. I remember my son’s tiny pink mouth. He looked like a baby bird with his eyes closed and his mouth open. He immediately began feeding. Steve cried tears of joy.

  Once we got settled, the proud papa headed for Sunshine Coast Grammar School to tell Bindi the news. “You’ve got a little brother,” he told her. Bindi was elated, in spite of the fact that she had spent every night saying her prayers for a little sister. Steve brought her to the hospital, where she took her little brother in her arms and looked at him lovingly.

  “How do you know he’s a boy?” she asked.

  “Bindi,” Thelma said, “they’re not born with clothes on.”

  “I think I will name him Brian,” Bindi said.

  “His name is Robert,” Steve told her.

  “Oh, well,” Bindi said. “I’m going to call him Brian for short.”

  It was a Sunday, December 1, 2003, and we had all just received the best Christmas present ever. Robert Clarence Irwin. Baby Bob.

  Steve loved showing off his new son. When we brought him home, all the zoo staff welcomed the new arrival.

  We have always had a good relationship with a group of Buddhist monks from Tibet. They had blessed Bindi when she was a newborn. As Robert celebrated his one-month birthday, we decided to hold a fund-raiser for a Buddhist nun’s convent where the well had dried up.

  A new well would cost forty thousand dollars. We felt that amount might be achievable in a series of fund-raising events. We invited the nuns to stay at Australia Zoo and planned to hold a fund-raiser at our brand-new Crocoseum, doing our part to help raise some money for the new well.

  The nuns wished to know if we wanted them to bless the animals while they were at the zoo. “Would you please bless Robert?” we asked.

  Bindi had been blessed along with the crocodiles when she was a month old. Now we would do the same for Robert. The nuns came into the Crocoseum for the ceremony. I brought a sleepy little Robert, adorned with his prayer flag and a scarf. We invited press to help publicize the plight of the nuns. Robert was very peaceful. The nuns sang, chanted, and gave him their special blessing.

  The ceremony was over, and the croc show was about to begin. Steve wanted to share Robert’s first crocodile show with everyone at the Crocoseum, as he was going to feed Murray the crocodile.

  Just as we had done with Bindi at this age, we brought Robert out for the show. Steve talked to the visitors about how proud he was of his son. He pointed out the crocodile to Baby Bob. Although Robert had been in with the crocodiles before, and would be again, this was an event where we could share the moment with everybody.

  When the croc show was over, Steve brought Robert back underneath the Crocoseum and I put him in his stroller. His eyes were big and he was waving his arms. This event would mark the beginning of a lifetime of working with his father as a wildlife warrior. Steve and Bindi were regulars during the croc shows, and now it looked as though Robert would be joining in as well.

  Later that day, a message was forwarded to us. One of the television channels covering the event at the Crocoseum had decided to put a negative slant on the story.

  “How crazy could that be?” I said to Steve. “What negative aspect could you possibly find in such a beautiful event?”

  Having children growing up at a zoo prompted some people to feel that ours was somehow not a suitable lifestyle. We had occasionally encountered this opinion before and always managed simply to agree to disagree with the naysayers. So we weren’t worried.

  We finished our day. Steve cooked dinner. I hung freshly laundered clothes on the line. Robert slept in his stroller. Bindi was outside, running around visiting with her fairy friends in the bushes.

  Then the news broke. And it broke like a tidal wave. It wasn’t just one television station that had picked up the story. There appeared to be a collective decision to crucify Steve for having Robert at the crocodile show with him.

  Everything stopped. Dinner stopped. We stopped. The phone calls started.

  The story had gone out all over the world. Steve was portrayed as an evil, ugly monster who had exploited his son in some kind of stunt show. It is difficult to grasp the atmosphere at the center of a media attack unless it has happened to you. I felt as though the mob was going to be outside our gates with lighted torches.

  Part of the problem was the infamous Michael Jackson “baby-dangling” incident, which had occurred just over a year before: The pop star hung his baby out a hotel window in Berlin to adoring fans waiting below. The
press played the two stories off each other. Steve and Michael, a couple of baby danglers.

  We didn’t know what to do. It was as though we were being hunted. Steve went off to the back block of the zoo to try to get his head around everything that had been happening. He built a fire and gazed into it.

  I didn’t have to think about it. I knew beyond certainty that the most important part of Steve’s life was his family. His children meant everything to him. All of a sudden, my wonderful, sharing, protective husband was being condemned. His crime was sharing wildlife experiences with Robert, exactly as he had done for the last five and a half years with Bindi.

  The media circus escalated. Helicopters hovered over the zoo, trying to snag any glimpse of the crazy Irwin family. Steve erected shade cloth around our yard for privacy. We soon realized we couldn’t go anywhere. There would be no visits to the zoo, no answering the phone, no doing croc shows. The criticism and the spin continued.

  I stood by Steve’s side and watched his heart break. I couldn’t believe the mean-spirited, petty, awful people in the world. Editors manipulated film footage, trying to make the croc look bigger or closer to Robert than it actually was. What possible end could that serve?

  I have seen Tasmanian devils battle over a carcass. I have seen lionesses crowding a kill, dingoes on the trail of a feral piglet, an adult croc thrashing its prey to pieces. But never, in all the animal world, have I witnessed anything to match the casual cruelty of the human being.

  It was about to get worse. We stepped off a very dark cliff indeed.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Antarctica

  The same night the Baby Bob controversy hit, we were still reeling with the unexpected fallout when a police officer stopped by. The governor-general, the officer said, required Steve to contact him immediately.

  “I’m not sure exactly where Steve is,” I said. I only knew that he was somewhere in the back block, contemplating the day’s events.

  “It would be good if Steve could make that call tonight,” the officer said.