Steve & Me

by Terri Irwin

  He designed three berths, a plasma screen television for the kids, and air-conditioned comfort below deck. He placed a big marlin board off the back, for Jet Skis, shark cages, or hauling out huge crocs. One feature that he was really adamant about was a helicopter pad. He designed the craft so that the helicopter could land on the top. Steve’s design plans went back and forth to Perth for months.

  “I want this boat’s primary function to be crocodile research and rescue work,” Steve said. “So I’m going to name her Croc One.”

  “Why don’t we call it For Sale instead?” I suggested.

  I’m not sure Steve saw the humor in that. Croc One was his baby. But for some reason, I felt tremendous trepidation about this boat. I attributed my feelings of concern to Bindi and Robert. Anytime you have kids on a boat, the rules change—no playing hide-and-seek, no walking on deck without a life jacket on. It made me uncomfortable to think about being two hundred miles out at sea with two young kids.

  We had had so many wild adventures together as a family that, ultimately, I had to trust Steve. But my support for Croc One was always, deep down, halfhearted at best. I couldn’t shake my feeling of foreboding about it.

  Over the course of two years, from June 2004 to June 2006, two separate deaths did nothing to ease my overall anxiety. Steve’s beloved Staffordshire bull terrier Sui died of cancer in June 2004. He had set up his swag and slept beside her all night, talking to her, recalling old times in the bush catching crocodiles, and comforting her.

  Losing Sui brought up memories of losing Chilli a decade and a half earlier. “I am not getting another dog,” Steve said. “It is just too painful.”

  Wes, the most loyal friend anyone could have, was there for Steve while Sui passed from this life to the next. Wes shared in Steve’s grief. They had known Sui longer than Steve and I had been together.

  Two years after Sui’s death, in June 2006, we lost Harriet. At 175, Harriet was the oldest living creature on earth. She had met Charles Darwin and sailed on the Beagle. She was our link to the past at the zoo, and beyond that, our link to the great scientist himself. She was a living museum and an icon of our zoo.

  The kids and I were headed to Fraser Island, along the southern coast of Queensland, with Joy, Steve’s sister, and her husband, Frank, our zoo manager, when I heard the news. An ultrasound had confirmed that Harriet had suffered a massive heart attack.

  Steve called me. “I think you’d better come home.”

  “I should talk to the kids about this,” I said.

  Bindi was horrified. “How long is Harriet going to live?” she asked.

  “Maybe hours, maybe days, but not long.”

  “I don’t want to see Harriet die,” she said resolutely. She wanted to remember her as the healthy, happy tortoise with whom she’d grown up.

  From the time Bindi was a tiny baby, she would enter Harriet’s enclosure, put her arms around the tortoise’s massive shell, and rest her face against her carapace, which was always warm from the sun. Harriet’s favorite food was hibiscus flowers, and Bindi would collect them by the dozen to feed her dear friend.

  I was worried about Steve but told him that Bindi couldn’t bear to see Harriet dying. “It’s okay,” he said. “Wes is here with me.” Once again, it fell to Wes to share his best mate’s grief.

  One of my favorite memories of Harriet was when John Edward, the psychic medium, came to the zoo. He found out almost by accident that he could read living animals. Everything Harriet communicated to him was absolutely spot-on.

  Although John hadn’t been to the zoo before, Harriet told him that she used to be in another enclosure and that she liked this one better. That made sense because her current enclosure was bigger. Harriet also said that she liked the keeper with an accent, but it wasn’t Australian or American. John was having trouble placing the accent, and then he met Jan, who was English. “That’s the accent,” he said. Turns out Jan had been taking care of Harriet since before I had ever visited the zoo. John also said that Harriet had had blood drawn from her tail—which was correct, since we’d done a DNA profile on her.

  One thing, though, John had wrong. “Harriet misses her blanket,” he said.

  “You know, John,” I said, “Harriet can’t have a blanket, because she tries to eat everything.”

  “She misses her blanket,” John politely insisted.

  After he left the zoo, I asked Steve about it. “Did Harriet ever have a blanket?”

  Steve laughed. “Nah, mate, she’d have just eaten it.”

  Weeks went by. I visited Steve’s dad, Bob, and told him about everything John Edward had said, right up to the blanket. “He was spot-on until he got to the blanket,” I said.

  Bob’s face widened with a big grin. “Actually, back in the eighties,” he said, “a woman knitted a blanket for Harriet. On cold nights, before we had given Harriet a heat lamp, we would put the blanket over her shell, hoping that it would help contain some of her heat during the night.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t believe it. Bob said, “Harriet had that blanket for weeks and weeks, until one day she tried to eat it. Then we had to take it away.”

  Even in the midst of loss, Steve managed to concentrate on future projects. One included plans to work with Philippe Cousteau Jr., the grandson of one of Steve’s heroes, the pioneering oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, on a documentary called Ocean’s Deadliest.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The School of the Bush

  On July 25, 2006—the day after Bindi’s eighth birthday celebration, and the dead of winter in mild, sunny Queensland—we headed out for the Cape York Peninsula on a five-week croc research trip.

  Once again, we partnered with the University of Queensland’s Professor Craig Franklin. Steve’s instincts, experience, and scientific curiosity about crocodiles married well with the academic world.

  He certainly put his Crocodile Hunter money where his heart was. We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the scientific equipment, travel costs, trapping gear, and the infrastructure to support the big research team. For the first time, we would employ time-depth recorders as well as satellite tracking to trace croc behavior.

  Although crocodiles have remained virtually unchanged for nearly sixty-five million years, our lack of understanding of their habits is shocking. No one knows much of anything about them. No scientific data exists, for example, on what percentage of crocodiles reach maturity in the wild. Is it one in fifty? One in one hundred? One in two hundred? The last figure seems to be the best guess, but a guess it is.

  It seemed the more we studied crocs, the more questions we had. For example, we know that crocs eat fish, as well as mammals that venture too close to the water’s edge. But many crocodiles live in salt water, where no mammals would come down for a drink. So what do they eat?

  This would be the first croc research trip where both Bindi and Robert were old enough to participate. Robert was two and a half, and walking and talking like a serious little man. Bindi, of course, had been involved in croc research trips before. But now she had new motivation. We were in the middle of filming her own nature show, Bindi the Jungle Girl.

  This was important for Steve. “There’d be nothing that would make me happier than having Bindi just take over filming and I could take it easy and run the zoo, do my conservation work, and let Bindi have the limelight,” Steve would say.

  It might have seemed like an unusual thing to say about a kid who just turned eight, but Bindi was no ordinary kid. She had a calling. I would sense it when I was around her, just as I sensed it when I first met Steve.

  Although Bindi was a regular kid most of the time—playing and being goofy, with me making her eat her vegetables, brush her teeth, and go to school on time—there were many moments when I’d see someone who’d been here before. Bindi would participate in the filming in such a way that she always made sure a certain conservation message came through, or she’d want to do a take again to make sure her words got the
message across properly.

  I continued to marvel at the wise being in this little person’s body. I kept catching glimpses, like snapshots through the window of a moving train, of this person who knew she was working toward making the world a better place. Watching her evolve was truly special.

  And here was our training ground, here was our school of the bush: the Cape York Peninsula, Lakefield National Park, one of our favorite places in the world. Bindi and Robert were familiar with the area from our research trip the year before, and they returned to it like an old friend.

  Although Steve never much liked to drive in cities, as soon as we hit the bush he would take over at the wheel. He had the eyes, and because he could spot everything, it was always an interesting trek in.

  As soon as we reached the campsite, where we would launch the boat and start setting the traps, Steve was into it immediately. He would scan up and down the river system for an hour and a half, dozens of miles, getting to know where the crocs hung out. He was able to match a croc to each slide, each track, belly print, and foot mark in the mud. He even remembered crocodiles from the year before, recalling them by name.

  As he set the traps, Steve specifically targeted different-sized animals that he and the other scientists had agreed to catch: big males, breeding females, and subadults. He set floating traps and soft mesh traps. Steve would often catch more crocs in a single day than the team could cope with.

  Some of the crocodiles had amazing injuries. One had been hit by a crossbow. The arrow had stuck into the back of its head so deep that no probe that we used could find the end of the wound.

  Other crocs had fought among themselves. One that we affectionately named Trevor had two broken legs. When we tried to pick up his front legs to tuck them into his sides, we felt only floppy bits of busted-up bone, which would twist in unnatural angles.

  “I want to take this crocodile home,” I said.

  Steve laughed. “This croc is still big and fat and fighting fit,” he said. “Don’t worry about him.”

  As luck would have it, we caught Trevor a second time. “Here’s the deal,” I said to Steve. “If we catch this crocodile once more, I’m taking him home.” He could see I was serious. Perhaps it was intentional that Steve never caught Trevor again.

  We trapped several smaller females, all around the nine-foot mark. That’s when Steve stepped back and let the all-girl team take over: all the women in camp, zoo workers mainly, myself, and others. We would jump on the croc, help secure the tracking device, and let her go.

  At one point Steve trapped a female that he could see was small and quiet. He turned to Bindi. “How would you like to jump the head?”

  Bindi’s eyes lit up. This was what she had been waiting for. Once Steve removed the croc from the trap and secured its jaws, the next step was for the point person to jump the croc’s head. Everybody else on the team followed immediately afterward, pinning the crocodile’s body.

  “Don’t worry,” I said to Bindi. “I’ll back you up.” Or maybe I was really talking to Steve. He was nervous as he slipped the croc out of its mesh trap. He hovered over the whole operation, knowing that if anything went amiss, he was right there to help.

  “Ready, and now!” he said. Bindi flung herself on the head of the crocodile. I came in right over her back. The rest of the girls jumped on immediately, and we had our croc secured.

  “Let’s take a photo with the whole family,” Professor Franklin said. Bindi sat proudly at the crocodile’s head, her hand casually draped over its eyes. Steve was in the middle, holding up the croc’s front legs. Next in line was me. Finally, Robert had the tail. This shot ended up being our 2006 family Christmas card.

  I look at it now and it makes me laugh out loud. The family that catches crocs together, rocks together. The Irwin family motto.

  Steve, Bindi, and I are all smiling. But then there is Robert’s oh-so-serious face. He has a top-jaw rope wrapped around his body, with knots throughout. He took his job seriously. He had the rope and was ready as the backup. He was on that croc’s tail. It was all about catching crocs safely, mate. No mucking around here.

  As we idled back in to camp, Robert said, “Can I please drive the boat?”

  “Crikey, mate, you are two years old,” Steve said. “I’ll let you drive the boat next year.”

  But then, quite suddenly and without a word, Steve scooped Robert up and sat him up next to the outboard. He put the tiller in his hand.

  “Here’s what you do, mate,” Steve said, and he began to explain how to drive the boat. He seemed in a hurry to impart as much wisdom to his son as possible.

  Robert spent the trip jumping croc tails, driving the boat, and tying knots. Steve created a croc made of sticks and set it on a sandbar. He pulled the boat up next to it, and he, Robert, and Bindi went through all the motions of jumping the stick-croc.

  “I’m going to say two words,” Robert shouted, imitating his father. “‘Go,’ and ‘Now.’ First team off on ‘Go,’ second team off on ‘Now.’” Then he’d yell “Go, now” at the top of his lungs. He and Steve jumped up as if the stick-croc was about to swing around and tear their arms off.

  “Another croc successfully caught, mate,” Steve said proudly. Robert beamed with pride too.

  When he got back to Croc One, Robert wrangled his big plush crocodile toy. I listened, incredulous, as my not-yet-three-year-old son muttered the commands of a seasoned croc catcher. He had all the lingo down, verbatim.

  “Get me a twelve-millimeter rope,” Robert commanded. “I need a second one. Get that top-jaw rope under that tooth, yep, the eye tooth, get it secured. We’ll need a third top-jaw rope for this one. Who’s got a six-millimeter rope? Hand me my Leatherman. Cut that rope here. Get that satellite tracker on.”

  The stuffed animal thoroughly secured, Robert made as if to brush off his little hands. “Professor Franklin,” he announced in his best grown-up voice, “it’s your croc.”

  Watching Steve around the camp was witnessing a man at one with his environment. Steve had spent all his life perfecting his bush skills, first learning them at his father’s side when he was a boy. He hero-worshiped Bob and finally became like his dad and then some.

  Steve took all the knowledge he’d acquired over the years and added his own experience. Nothing seemed to daunt him, from green ants, mozzies, sand flies, and leeches, to constant wet weather. On Cape York we faced the obvious wildlife hazards, including feral pigs, venomous snakes, and huge crocodiles. I never saw Steve afraid of anything, except the chance of harm coming to someone he loved.

  He learned how to take care of himself over the years he spent alone in the bush. But as his life took a sharp turn, into the unknown territory of celebrity-naturalist, he suddenly found himself with a whole film crew to watch out for.

  Filming wildlife documentaries couldn’t have happened without John Stainton, our producer. Steve always referred to John as the genius behind the camera, and that was true. The music orchestration, the editing, the knowledge of what would make good television and what wouldn’t—these were all areas of John’s clear expertise.

  But on the ground, under the water, or in the bush, while we were actually filming, it was 100 percent Steve. He took care of the crew and eventually his family as well, while filming in some of the most remote, inaccessible, and dangerous areas on earth.

  Steve kept the cameraman alive by telling him exactly when to shoot and when to run. He orchestrated what to film and where to film, and then located the wildlife. Steve’s first rule, which he repeated to the crew over and over, was a simple one: Film everything, no matter what happens.

  “If something goes wrong,” he told the crew, “you are not going to be of any use to me lugging a camera and waving your other arm around trying to help. Just keep rolling. Whatever the sticky situation is, I will get out of it.”

  Just keep rolling. Steve’s mantra.

  On all of our documentary trips, Steve packed the food, set up camp, fed the
crew. He knew to take the extra tires, the extra fuel, the water, the gear. He anticipated the needs of six adults and two kids on every film shoot we ever went on.

  As I watched him at Lakefield, the situation was no different. Our croc crews came and went, and the park rangers came and went, and Steve wound up organizing anywhere from twenty to thirty people.

  Everyone did their part to help. But the first night, I watched while one of the crew put up tarps to cover the kitchen area. After a day or two, the tarps slipped, the ropes came undone, and water poured off into our camp kitchen.

  After a full day of croc capture, Steve came back into camp that evening. He made no big deal about it. He saw what was going on. I watched him wordlessly shimmy up a tree, retie the knots, and resecure the tarps. What was once a collection of saggy, baggy tarps had been transformed into a well-secured roof.

  Steve had the smooth and steady movements of someone who was self-assured after years of practice. He’d get into the boat, fire up the engine, and start immediately. There was never any hesitation. His physical strength was unsurpassed. He could chop wood, gather water, and build many things with an ease that was awkwardly obvious when anybody else (myself, for example) tried to struggle with the same task.

  But when I think of all his bush skills, I treasured most his way of delivering up the natural world. On that croc research trip in the winter of 2006, Steve presented me with a series of memories more valuable than any piece of jewelry.

  Every morning and evening at Lakefield, the fruit bats would come and go from the trees near our campsite. During the day, you could hear them in the distance as they squabbled over territory. Each fruit bat wanted to jockey for the best position on a branch. But when evening came, as if by silent agreement, all the bats knew to fly off at the same time.

  Steve grabbed me and the kids one evening just at dusk, and we went out onto the river to watch the bats. I would rank that night as one of the most incredible experiences of my life, right up there with catching crocs and swimming with manatees.