Steve & Me by Terri Irwin

Author:Terri Irwin
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2008-09-03T23:00:00+00:00

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 aware 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

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