Four Years On, How Does Steve Irwin's Family Cope With
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where the Story Trent Dalton are Photography Russell Shakespeare Four years on, how does Steve Irwin’s family cope with missing him? They go crocodile hunting on Cape York. BQW04SEP10BIN_10-15.indd 10 27/08/2010 3:48:42 PM conservation BQW04SEP10BIN_10-15.indd 11 27/08/2010 3:49:09 PM indi Irwin props her right leg on smarter. But I only saw Steve Irwin on television. a rock in the river bank, cringing “No, he was extremely intelligent,” says as her mother details the moment Franklin. “He was such a complex man. He was of her conception. “Bindi was one of the best naturalists I’ve ever worked with. conceived after an awards show People only saw that image of him. And he was in LA,” Terri is saying. “We fully aware of that image and what it meant.” Bboth didn’t want to go to the after-party …” “Hi Mum!” Robert calls, high up a tree and “Oh great,” says 12-year-old Bindi, balancing reaching for a distant branch. on the rock now. “I’m gonna have to wear “He is Steve,” says Terri. “It’s amazing. Bindi a paper bag over my head for the rest of my life.” is so much like Steve with this empathy that she “Hey, we’ve sexed crocodiles together, we has. She’s hard on the outside and very soft on can share anything,” says Terri. the inside. Robert just is Steve. Even the style I have just inserted the middle finger of my of his writing, the mannerisms with his hands, right hand into the posterior opening of a Cape the way he walks. It’s a really interesting study York crocodile, a watershed moment in a four- in nurture versus nature. There are little things day croc research tour with the khaki-clad Irwins about him that are so much like Steve that he and a 30-strong team of scientists, animal couldn’t have gotten from mimicking his dad wranglers, cooks and several bushmen with because he was only two when he lost his dad.” unnerving knives. There is no obvious organ Robert hangs from a branch, sloth-like. His rising inside the croc’s cloaca so I proclaim it blond bowl-cut hair falls from his forehead, his a girl. “Spot on,” says Professor Craig Franklin. eyes roll back inside his head. He’s chewing on The University of Queensland zoologist is something. “I’m just eating green ants,” he says. two years into a ten-year study of crocs in the “You can eat green ants?” I ask. pristine river systems of the Steve Irwin Wildlife “Yeah, if their bums are big enough.” Reserve, a 135,000ha Cape York sanctuary “What do they taste like?” created by the Howard government in 2007 and Bindi kindly answers for her brother: “Like run by the Irwin family as a living tribute to the a sour lolly.” Free spirit … The image of his father, six-year-old Robert has been protected from the media, not the natural world. late crocodile hunter. Wrestling the croc’s jaws The kids are home-schooled. Robert briefly shut, Terri smiles proudly as the beast covers tried mainstream primary schooling but four sorrowful, unfailingly polite, extremely well- my hand in a gush of slimy white fluid. Nothing walls and a whiteboard weren’t going to work adjusted and, yes, natural, young girl – such brings people together like a crocodile sexing. for Steve Irwin’s son. “I’m glad we’re doing comments seem careless and ugly. Then there’s Six-year-old Robert laughs hysterically at his distance education,” says Terri. “He would a moment – nothing stage-managed, just a little mother’s recollections of Bindi’s conception. have been the naughty kid because he would moment by a tree – when she looks you in the He throws a handful of dry leaves in the air. have been bored. When he got bored in school eye and says she wants to carry on the family “That’s yuck!” he screams. we had him tested and the teachers said, ‘You business because it means she might save a few Terri smiles at her son. “Wes helped us with know, you have someone who is very gifted, hundred thousand animals; because she thought your conception,” she says, referring to Australia he’s like a 98.6 percentile in his age group’. her old man was the greatest thing in this world Zoo director Wes Mannion, who was Steve’s They recommended that he just learn at his and following in his footsteps helps her feel close best friend. Robert drops his head, hands over own level. He’ll be starting fourth grade this to him again, and you believe her. She knows the his ears. Terri explains she was working to month and he’s six years old. It’s not off-the- game because she learned it from her dad. The a strict biological clock, endeavouring to have charts amazing but it is amazing.” spotlight keeps the money rolling in and the a boy. The family was camping on one of their Terri has the stance of an explorer; a hardy money – millions of it – rolls on to the animals. North Queensland conservation properties. frontierswoman. She always seems to be “Don’t engage with the bad stuff,” says “The time came and we asked Wes to take marching uphill, pressing forth. Onward and Terri. “I teach that to Bindi. If there’s Bindi for a walk to find some snakes,” she says. upward. An optimist. She doesn’t read bad press. something about us in a magazine I’ll look at “Seven minutes later … ” Don’t engage, she says. She doesn’t let her it first before I let her read the magazine. One “Oh, please?” begs Bindi. daughter Google her own name. If Bindi did time I missed an article. It was a story about The Irwins got their boy, an irrepressible she’d find, among fan pages from around the a man who was stalking the family. This man tearaway with dirt on his face and cuts on his world, barbs of criticism from parents who think ended up going to jail. She didn’t know legs. He seems less the product of a man and she’s too young to stand under the spotlight. She anything about it and I wanted to keep it that a woman than something grown from a seed might find the new single from Australian singer- way. And she reads the magazine and she goes, dropped by a bushlark in the red outback dirt; a songwriter Dan Kelly, Bindi Irwin Apocalypse Jam, ‘This guy went to jail for stalking us!’ If she boy made of soil and saltwater. His resemblance a bizarre fantasy about Bindi helping save Kelly hadn’t read that she never would have known to his father, who died on September 4, 2006, is from flaming tornadoes ravaging the Earth. She and a 12-year-old girl shouldn’t go through life as unsettling as it is profound: the way he skids might find comedian Fiona O’Loughlin’s fearful. You should go through life being down the steepest incline of a ridge while others controversial comments on ABC TV in March optimistic and having fun and being a kid.” walk around it; the way he converses in private suggesting Bindi needed a slap in the face. Robert slides down the tree trunk and zips with stink bugs, or hides in trees for hours just Pouring scorn on a 12-year-old girl seems past his mother toward an aluminium boat tied to capture nature’s endless pantomime from a cheap way to mine a laugh. To see Bindi in down at the edge of the Wenlock River. a gallery seat. He seems deeper than his dad, person – a deeply contemplative, sometimes “C’mon, we’ve got crocodiles to catch,” he says. BQW04SEP10BIN_10-15.indd 12 27/08/2010 12:43:55 PM conservation His sister follows. In the boat, Bindi adjusts I fill my water bottle straight from the river. her brother’s life jacket. She picks a blade of I can’t see a single impurity through the plastic. grass from his hair, rests a protective arm across “There are more fish species in these river his shoulders. Her best friend. Terri’s eyes systems than anywhere else in Australia,” linger on her children. She sees the past and Franklin says. So far his team has discovered the present. She sees the future of 157 bird species on the reserve, 43 reptile conservation in Australia. And she can’t help species, 19 amphibian species, a growing list thinking something’s missing. of rare and threatened native species. And the research is in its infancy. “We don’t even know ULYSSES IS WAITING. THE SMELL OF DeatH yet what we stand to lose,” the professor says. drifts downriver from a bend in the Wenlock Terri has started a petition called “Save they call “Chicane”. Franklin eases the throttle Steve’s Place”, to which she has attracted on the outboard motor. “That’s about as close as 300,000 signatures from around the world. When you’ll come to what a dead body smells like,” he someone asks for an autograph, she asks for says. It’s a crocodile bait: half a wild pig, what a signature. Terri versus the power men in suits. local bushmen call research “volunteers”. There’s a story in the Bindi Wildlife Adventures Rampant pigs are one of the greatest threats book series in which a team of bauxite miners to ecological stability in the reserve.