Steve Irwin Remembered
- 4th Sept - It was a year ago today that cheeky Aussie nut-job Steve Irwin got himself on the wrong end of a stingray. News of his untimely death was met with huge outpourings of grief all around the world. Mark Steer takes a quick look at why a man whose love of all things sleek and scaly kept us pinned to our sofas for many an evening is still mourned.The first time Steve Irwin came to my attention was in the late nineties; it was immediately obvious he was going to be a huge star. I was working in a seed-packing warehouse at the time. Believe you me, that was a dull job. Taking packets of seeds out of boxes and putting them into other boxes. Out of boxes, into boxes, out of boxes, into boxes. All. Fricking. Day. Not even tea-break could relieve the tedium.
But not that day, that glorious day after Steve Irwin’s Ten Deadliest Snakes program had been on. The evening before we had all watched incredulously as this Aussie oddball had chased around the outback after ever more poisonous snakes. Each time he found one he’d grab the twisting pipe of death-juice by the tail and cry “it’s tra’en a bite me, it’s actually tra’en a bite me”.
|
That day the warehouse tearoom was a-buzz with talk of taipans and tiger snakes. Not even Attenborough got this much attention. Steve Irwin, with his infectious enthusiasm and complete disregard for his own safety, had gripped the nation… well at the very least he’d gripped a small seed-packing warehouse in south Suffolk – success was assured.
Controversy
Always looking for the next way to engage his audience, the man known as the Crocodile Hunter went from one loony exploit to another. However, a few of Irwin’s stunts pushed the boundaries a little too far for the liking of some. The time he jumped into a river after a large croc only to scramble back into the small vessel a short while later shouting, “row, row, row!” to his heavily pregnant wife was a firm favourite of ours, but raised more than a few eyebrows.
But it was the time he decided to feed a dead chicken to a crocodilian bohemoth whilst holding his newborn baby boy in the other hand that was really denounced as a ‘bad thing’. He was even stripped of his accolade of 2004 Australian Man of the Year over the incident. Personally I saw little problem with the event – if he’d got the chicken and baby mixed up I grant there might have been an issue, but if you actually watch the footage, baby Bob was never in any danger.
CrikeyBut it’s not the controversy we remember Steve Irwin for; it’s the madcap dashes through the bush in the pursuit of a cow-sized lizard, it’s the stifled curses whilst extracting his nose from a tree snake's toothy grip; it’s the boundless enthusiasm for nature and indefatigable conservation efforts.
Irwin brought what he cared about to the most unlikely audiences and won them over, even in Ipswich.
Well, we've sung Steve Irwin's praises along with the rest of the world. Here are some other heroes that we shouldn't forget:
- Saving the world - Carl Jones
- Lighting the world - George Gray
- Photographing the world - Dennis Kunkel
- Leaving the world - Caroline Herschel
Image: W
Share this
