Steve & Me

by Terri Irwin

  Robert stopped talking. He held on to Piggy, his little plush friend. He feverishly worked Piggy’s ears through his fingers, staring out the window. For a half hour he didn’t say a word.

  When we got close to the airport, the reality of the public reaction to Steve’s death began to sink in. Members of the media were everywhere. We drove straight through the gates to pull up right next to the charter plane. The last thing I felt like doing at that moment was to talk to anyone about what had happened. I just wanted to get to Steve.

  As I walked toward the plane, I turned back to thank the police who had helped us. The tears in their eyes shocked me out of my own personal cocoon of grief. This wasn’t just a job for them. They genuinely felt for us, and suffered Steve’s loss. So many other people loved him too, I thought.

  All during the endless, three-hour plane ride to Maroochydore, I kept flashing back to our fourteen years of adventures together. My mind kept focusing on another plane ride, so similar to this one, when Bindi and I had to fly from the United States back to Australia after Steve’s mum had died. Part of me wished we could have flown forever, never landing, never facing what we were about to. I concentrated on Bindi and Robert, getting them fed and making sure they were comfortable. But the thought of that last sad flight stayed there in the back of my mind.

  The plane landed at Maroochydore in the dark. We taxied in between hangars, out of public view. I think it was raining, but perhaps it wasn’t, maybe I was just sad. As I came down the steps of the plane, Frank, Joy, and Wes stood there. We all hugged one another. Wes sobbed. We managed to help one another to the hangar, where we all piled into two vehicles for the half-hour drive back to the zoo.

  I turned on the DVD in the backseat for the kids. I desperately needed a moment without having to explain what was going on. I wanted to talk to Wes, Joy, and Frank. At some point during the ride, Wes reached back and closed the DVD player. The light from the player was giving the press the opportunity to film and photograph us in the car.

  This was a time to be private and on our own. How clever of Wes to consider that, I thought, right in the middle of everything.

  “Wes,” I said, “what are we going to do now?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Steve’s Whale One

  In October of 1991, on the day I met Steve, it was only by chance that I stopped at his wildlife park at all. I had been sleeping in the backseat of a car on the way back from a barbecue at a friend of a friend’s house. Up front, Lori’s friend knew I was interested in zoos. When he saw a sign for this one, he debated with himself whether he should wake me. Even when he did, I wasn’t sure if this reptile park was going to be much more than a few snakes in little glass tanks.

  So it was only by chance that I was on that highway at all, and only chance that I stopped. And it was only by chance that Steve conducted the croc show that day. Some days, Wes did the show.

  Chance. Fate. Destiny.

  These were words I lived by. I believed my life had been shaped for a special purpose. But with Steve’s death my faith was tested. Was it pure chance that Steve, a man who cheated mortality almost every single day of his adult life, died in such a bizarre accident?

  During the decade and a half that I knew him, I don’t think a week went by when he didn’t get a bite, blow, or injury of some kind. His knee and shoulder plagued him from years of jumping crocs. As Steve erected a fence at our Brigalow Belt conservation property, a big fence-post driver he was using slipped and landed directly on his head, compressing the fifth disk in his neck. Even injured, he still managed to push on—at the zoo, filming, and doing heavy construction. He went at work like a bull at a gate. He climbed trees with orangutans. He traversed the most remote deserts and the most impossible mountains. He packed his life chock-a-block full with risks of all kinds.

  “I get called an adrenaline junkie every other minute,” Steve said. “I’m just fine with that.”

  One crowded hour of glorious life is worth more than an age without a name. I had no regrets for Steve’s glorious life, and I know he couldn’t have lived any other way.

  When Bindi, Robert, and I got home on the evening of Steve’s death, we encountered a strange scene that we ourselves had created. The plan had been that Steve would get back from his Ocean’s Deadliest film shoot before we got back from Tasmania. So we’d left the house with a funny surprise for him.

  We got large plush toys and arranged them in a grouping to look like the family. We sat one that represented me on the sofa, a teddy bear about her size for Bindi, and a plush orangutan for Robert. We dressed the smaller toys in the kids’ clothes, and the big doll in my clothes. I went to the zoo photographer and got close-up photographs of our faces that we taped onto the heads of the dolls. We posed them as if we were having dinner, and I wrote a note for Steve.

  “Surprise,” the note said. “We didn’t go to Tasmania! We are here waiting for you and we love you and miss you so much! We will see you soon. Love, Terri, Bindi, and Robert.”

  The surprise was meant for Steve when he returned and we weren’t there. Instead the dolls silently waited for us, our plush-toy doubles, ghostly reminders of a happier life.

  Wes, Joy, and Frank came into the house with me and the kids. We never entertained, we never had anyone over, and now suddenly our living room seemed full. Unaccustomed to company, Robert greeted each one at the door.

  “Take your shoes off before you come in,” he said seriously. I looked over at him. He was clearly bewildered but trying so hard to be a little man.

  We had to make arrangements to bring Steve home. I tried to keep things as private as possible. One of Steve’s former classmates at school ran the funeral home in Caloundra that would be handling the arrangements. He had known the Irwin family for years, and I recall thinking how hard this was going to be for him as well.

  Bindi approached me. “I want to say good-bye to Daddy,” she said.

  “You are welcome to, honey,” I said. “But you need to remember when Daddy said good-bye to his mother, that last image of her haunted him while he was awake and asleep for the rest of his life.”

  I suggested that perhaps Bindi would like to remember her daddy as she last saw him, standing on top of the truck next to that outback airstrip, waving good-bye with both arms and holding the note that she had given him. Bindi agreed, and I knew it was the right decision, a small step in the right direction.

  I knew the one thing that I had wanted to do all along was to get to Steve. I felt an urgency to continue on from the zoo and travel up to the Cape to be with him. But I knew what Steve would have said. His concern would have been getting the kids settled and in bed, not getting all tangled up in the media turmoil.

  Our guests decided on their own to get going and let us get on with our night. I gave the kids a bath and fixed them something to eat. I got Robert settled in bed and stayed with him until he fell asleep. Bindi looked worried. Usually I curled up with Robert in the evening, while Steve curled up with Bindi. “Don’t worry,” I said to her. “Robert’s already asleep. You can sleep in my bed with me.”

  Little Bindi soon dropped off to sleep, but I lay awake. It felt as though I had died and was starting over with a new life. I mentally reviewed my years as a child growing up in Oregon, as an adult running my own business, then meeting Steve, becoming his wife and the mother of our children. Now, at age forty-two, I was starting again.

  I kept going over and over what had happened. I wanted to talk to everyone who had been there with Steve on the day of his accident. But I thought it more important to focus on our life together instead. Often, while we were on an adventure, it struck me as almost surreal for us to be in a tropical rain forest, for example, or on a South Pacific island, visiting the Galapagos, or trekking in snow-capped wilderness in America. I felt like I had been living in a movie.

  I lay there while the clock ticked on. Here is another minute I have survived without Steve. I consoled myself with the thought that t
he clock was ticking for all of us. None of us could know when it was going to be our time. I resolved that I would celebrate the people who were still here and apply myself to the work that still had to be done. My resolution was all well and good, but what really sustained me during those dark, lonely hours of the night was another deeper, more persistent thought. With every tick of the clock, I was one moment closer to being with Steve again. As strong as Steve was in this life, I knew without a doubt he would be a force to be reckoned with in the next.

  The first morning was especially hard. Usually our morning routine involved listening with one ear for the sound of a motorbike approaching the house. Steve never slept more than a few hours a night. He was always up before us and would go about his zoo business and then come back, riding up to the house and bursting through the door. He’d wrestle the kids and tell them about something new and exciting going on in the zoo, and then he would bundle them up, with me protesting that they needed hats or coats, or hadn’t brushed their teeth—and no matter what I said, he would spirit them off out the door and onto the motorbike.

  That first morning, the realization sank in that he wasn’t going to come bursting in anymore.

  Using the satellite phone connection, I finally reached Croc One. The captain, Kris, was in tears. I finally tracked down John Stainton, and he assured me that he hadn’t left Steve’s side.

  “I’ve got a charter plane coming,” John said. “I’ll get him home, Terri.”

  I asked about Steve’s personal effects. Steve had had on his khakis and wet-suit boots while he was diving, but because he had no jewelry or anything of value, the medical examiner had destroyed all his clothing.

  I was devastated. It’s completely unpredictable what one will hold dear in a time of grief, particularly in the case of an accident. I remember thinking, I’ve got to sit down with the powers that be and change these regulations. The family should decide what should be destroyed and what should be kept. I needed to focus on something other than losing Steve. That fact was just too hard to get my head around.

  As John arranged to bring Steve home, the media pressure steadily increased. I told Wes I wanted to go meet the plane, but that I wouldn’t take the kids. This was my time to be with my soul mate, and I needed to do it on my own. I headed out with a police escort. The Queensland police were considerate and professional, and an officer named Annie was personally assigned to make sure the overwhelming media attention did not interfere with my private moment to say good-bye to Steve.

  Wes accompanied me. It was night. As the seaplane came in, I recognized it as the same one that had taken Steve on many South Pacific adventures, in search of sea snakes, crested iguanas, or sharks. The ranks of police stood at attention. Many of them had met Steve previously. Once again, I was overwhelmed to see the looks of grief on their faces.

  The plane landed, and I had a moment to sit with Steve on my own. It was a bit of an effort to clamber up into the back of the plane. A simple wooden casket rested inside, still secured. I knew that who Steve was, his spirit and his soul, were no longer there, but it was strange how I couldn’t cry.

  I sat down and leaned my head against the wooden box that held his body and felt such strange peace.

  In some way, we were together again.

  As I write this, I am still waiting for Steve to walk through the door. His sarong still hangs on the bed. His toothbrush is in the bathroom.

  Reality is sinking in more and more. Bindi and I have a lot of heart-to-heart talks. These seem to help her, just like when she was younger and lost a special koala named Wilson. Wilson died of renal failure and is buried in our backyard. I felt thankful that over the years, I had set the foundation of faith with Bindi.

  “As hard as it is to understand, there was a reason for all of this,” I told her. “One day it will be clear.”

  Robert is like a pitiful puppy, and he still waits patiently for his daddy to come home from heaven. I hadn’t been prepared for how devastated Robert would be. Some nights he sits in the bathtub and cries. “I want my daddy,” he says, over and over. It absolutely tears my heart out.

  We have a dear friend, a wonderful psychologist who has helped a great deal—he suffered a loss in his own family recently, and we both felt sad. He explained that grief is your own process. You can’t compare your grief to anyone else’s. It is something that is uniquely yours. People outside our immediate circle murmured concern that perhaps Bindi was coping a little too well with her grief, and I wasn’t immune to comments in the press about her remarkably composed speech at Steve’s memorial service. It was nice to have my friend’s professional opinion to put my mind at ease.

  “That’s what you are aiming for,” he told me. “You are trying to raise children who can cope with life and not fall apart. That’s the goal. Understanding that where there is love there is grief, and where there is life there is death, and that a person’s spirit and soul never die and that their love never ends—these are important lessons to impart to our children.”

  Bindi does do well. It will take more time with Robert. I learned that as Bindi gets older and reaches adolescence, there may be another period when grief revisits her. Knowing that, I can prepare her for the rough patches ahead.

  Because of the constant media surveillance, I could not venture out to see the countless tributes that mourners laid down in front of the zoo. But all the items were collected and stored safely, and we now display a lovely memorial selection.

  The public response to Steve’s death would have overwhelmed him most of all—the kind thoughts, prayers, sympathy, and tears. I wasn’t facing this grief on my own. So many people from around the world were trying to come to terms with it as well. The process seemed particularly difficult for children who had not had the opportunity to experience the circle of life as Bindi had. I felt it was important to get a message out to them. When your hero dies, everything he stood for does not end. Everything he stood for must continue.

  There was never a doubt in my mind that I’d keep working toward stopping the destruction of our environment and wildlife that was spiraling out of control. There were so many triumphs that Steve had already worked so hard for.

  I sat down with Wes. “First, we’re going to work on everything Steve wanted to achieve,” I said. “Then we’ll move on to everything that we were collectively working toward. And finally, I want to continue with my own goals, in terms of our conservation work.”

  We strategized about the expansion of the zoo. I didn’t want to just maintain the zoo as it was, I wanted to follow Steve’s plans for the future. I felt that I was still having this wonderful, cheeky, competitive relationship with Steve.

  Wes and I took the stacks of plans, blueprints, and manila folders from Steve’s desk. I assembled them and laid them out on a conference table.

  “This was Steve’s plan for Australia Zoo over the next ten years,” I said. “I want to do it in five.”

  We would secure more land. I remember the first two acres we ever bought to enlarge the zoo, how Steve and I sat with our arms around each other, looking at the property next door and dreaming. Now we were negotiating for an additional five hundred acres of forestry land. This tract would join the existing zoo property with the five hundred acres of our conservation property, bringing our total to fifteen hundred acres at Australia Zoo.

  This winter we christened Steve’s Whale One, a whale-watching excursion boat that will realize another of his long-held dreams. He always wanted to expand the experience of the zoo to include whales. Steve’s Whale One is a way for people to see firsthand some of the most amazing creatures on earth. The humpbacks in Australian waters approach whale-watching boats with curiosity and openness. It is a delightful experience, and one that I am confident will work to help inspire people and end the inhumane practice of whaling.

  Bindi the Jungle Girl aired on July 18, 2007, on ABC (Channel 2) in Australia, and we were so proud. Bindi’s determination to carry on her father’s
legacy was a testament to everything Steve believed in. He had perfectly combined his love for his family with his love for conservation and leaving the world a better place. Now this love was perfectly passed down to his kids.

  The official beginning of Bindi’s career was a fantastic day. All the time and effort, and joy and sorrow of the past year culminated in this wonderful series. Now everyone was invited to see Bindi’s journey, first filming with her dad, and then stepping up and filming with Robert and me. It was also a chance to experience one more time why Steve was so special and unique, to embrace him, to appreciate him, and to celebrate his life.

  Bindi, Robert, and I would do our best to make sure that Steve’s light wasn’t hidden under a bushel. It would continue to shine as we worked together to protect all wildlife and all wild places.

  After Bindi’s show launched, it seemed so appropriate that another project we had been working on for many months came to fruition. We found an area of 320,000 acres in Cape York Peninsula, bordered on one side by the Dulcie River and on the other side by the Wenlock River—some of the best crocodile country in the world. It was one of the top spots in Australia, and the most critically important habitat in the state of Queensland. Prime Minister John Howard, along with the Queensland government, dedicated $6.3 million to obtaining this land, in memory of Steve.

  On July 22, 2007, the Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve became official. This piece of land means so much to the Irwin family, and I know what it would have meant to Steve. Ultimately, it meant the protection of his crocodiles, the animals he loved so much.

  What does the future hold for the Irwin family? Each and every day is filled with incredible triumphs and moments of terrible grief. And in between, life goes on. We are determined to continue to honor and appreciate Steve’s wonderful spirit. It lives on with all of us. Steve lived every day of his life doing what he loved, and he always said he would die defending wildlife. I reckon Bindi, Robert, and I will all do the same.