I’ve just been to the zoo (i.e. Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo) and was overwhelmed by the number of tributes laid there and the scores of people still rolling in five days after Steve’s death with messages and flowers and donations for Wildlife Warriors, the charity Steve and his wife Terri founded. Surprisingly, it surpassed the tributes I witnessed at King’s Cross last year, two weeks after the London Transport terrorist attacks. The only thing I can liken it to was the aftermath of the death of Princess Di, although it hasn’t quite reached those same levels of hysteria.
Whilst we were there Toby ran into a girl he used to know at university. Turns out she played softball for Australia in Athens in 2004 and won a silver medal. But that’s another story (although it is the first time I’ve met an Olympic athlete). She works for the zoo so was able to give us an interesting insight into the goings-on there. It’s clear that everyone who works at the zoo loved Steve very much and that he had a big impact on their lives. His loss has affected them all deeply. She also told me that apparently today (Friday) was International Khaki Day… wonder if that will become an annual thing. I had no idea of this but quite independently organised for my team to come in today wearing the closest they could get to khakis. Not everyone took part – some insisted that they had nothing remotely khaki – but for those that did it was a nice gesture.
At the zoo I made a donation to Wildlife Warriors and wrote a message on a khaki shirt. There were dozens of these hanging around the place covered in the messages people wrote for Steve and his family. Whilst I was doing this about seven zoo employees, some of which I recognised as having presented crocodile and tiger demonstrations, approached carrying a covered frame. They spent a few moments attaching it to a fence and then said a few quiet words to one another before turning around and having their photograph taken with it. At one point they all raised their thumbs and cried “Crikey”. After they left I moved in for a closer look. It was a framed photograph of Steve in action, feeding a crocodile. At the bottom were two crocodile teeth. I don’t know if they were in any way significant, maybe they were from a particular croc whom Steve was fond of but that’s just speculation. Around the photograph they’d written their own very personal and moving tributes.
Steve Irwin is an intrinsic part of the Sunshine Coast where I live and it's only now that he's gone that I've really noticed it. The day after his death I was cycling home from work and a bus passed by me. There he was, larger than life as always, covering the back of a bus. Anywhere you drive there are huge Australia Zoo billboards with Steve's picture on them. I wonder what will happen to those billboards... whether over time Steve's photograph will slowly be replaced by his daughter Bindi, or one of the other crocodile handlers.
It’s clear that Steve Irwin was a man who touched the hearts of many people all across the world for many different reasons. Some loved the entertainer, the man who could see the beauty in any animal and who educated the world about the characters and complexities of so-called dangerous animals. Others loved the conservationist, the selfless man who worked so hard to help and protect animals, putting all the money he made back into the zoo and similar projects. And yet others, those close to him, would have been more familiar with the family man, the ordinary bloke. Although after watching a re-run of a 2003 Andrew Denton interview with Steve, who insisted his TV persona was the real thing all the time, and others who knew him have confirmed this, I fail to see anything ordinary about him. On the contrary, I believe he was an extraordinary man, albeit down to earth. (By the way, Andrew Denton is like a younger, Australian Parkie.) An example of his ability to be both down to earth and extraordinary can be found in the weekly column written by the VC of the uni I work for (University of the Sunshine Coast): when Steve was granted an honorary senior fellowship at the uni in 2000 he turned up for graduation wearing, as always, his khakis.
I never actually met Steve Irwin but I did see him in the flesh once. On one visit to the zoo I spotted him running towards me with a group of zoo workers. I was trying to figure out what on earth could be such an emergency that they had to run - had a croc escaped? But maybe that's just how someone as energetic as Steve Irwin gets around. A girl I was with shouted, "Hey look, it's Steve. Hi Steve!" and as he ran passed he waved and smiled at us. Other people I know have said that he rode around the zoo on a scooter saying hello to people. And others have said that seeing him do the croc presentations made their visit. Everyone who visits the zoo hopes they'll be lucky enough to see Steve Irwin in action. It's so strange to think that will never happen now.
Germaine Greer's scathing, and possibly inaccurate comments earlier this week (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/australia/story/0,,1865124,00.html, calling Irwin "self-delusional" and "dominating" of animals, claiming that the zoo's crocs are depressed and that Steve's tragic death is a case of "the animal world finally taking revenge" on him are nothing less than disgusting, not least because of her insanely insensitive timing. But, whilst she claims John Stainton's job is "to keep Irwin pumped larger than life, shouting "Crikey!" and punching the air", it's clear that Greer's job is to disagree with general opinion and to wind everyone up in the most appauling way she can imagine, and, I suppose, everyone is entitled to their opinion. Greer states that, "the one lesson any conservationist must labour to drive home is that habitat loss is the principal cause of species loss", implying that Steve Irwin failed to do this and instead barged into fragile habitats, manhandling and distressing animals. But I think he did do this and this is how I hope the world remembers him, as a compassionate (and passionate) caring conservationist, as opposed to an "entertainer". Yes, he was entertaining but this was simply a by-product of his passion.
So, with this in mind, I have racked my brains trying to think of an Irwin-esque Tip for the Top. I thought of the fact that he bought vast swathes of land so that they could be conserved and kept away from greedy developers, something the Sunshine Coast sees a lot of as one of the fastest growing regions in Australia. And whilst it may be possible to put that into place on a smaller scale by buying land to live on and not developing or sub-dividing, or by refusing to buy on one of the new massive development estates and instead going for a traditional Queenslander (wooden home, raised for air-flow with a big deck or verander around the outside), that's really beyond the capabilities of most people and applies more to Australians than Brits, where most of the land has already been developed anyway.
So then I thought of the little things you could do, like encourage birds into your garden and put two bells rather than one on your cat's collar so it can't catch the birds. Rather strangely, as I was writing this post travelling in the car on Friday evening to Toby's parents' place, not too long after leaving the zoo, we hit a small animal. I remembered having heard somewhere what to do in these situations, particularly if it's a koala. We found the animal and it was definitely dead. But then we had the distressing task of moving it into the light and checking to see if it had a pouch. If it did we would have had to check inside the pouch for a joey and call the Australia Zoo Hospital (the number of which I have in my phone) to come and take it away. The animal was some kind of small marsupial by the way, possibly a bandicoot. Now, again this applies more to Australia as UK doesn't have animals with pouches but it can teach us to be more aware of animals crossing the roads and to take some care to check them out if we do hit them. I wasn't driving by the way. Oh no sirree! Blogging and driving definitely do not mix. Don't do it.
My struggle to think of some practical advice to offer has perhaps highlighted to me that this is an area I'm quite ignorant in. Or maybe conservation has been so ingrained since I was a school child that it's now second nature (leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but photographs, that kind of thing) but I do think I have a lot to learn, especially in this less familiar environment of Australia.
I will be making a donation to the Wildlife Warriors and for those of you who wish to do the same I will say be wary of bogus sites. I haven't seen any myself but I've heard they do exist. It's www.wildlifewarriors.org.au and you can get there from the Australia Zoo website.
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