Chapter 24

Ladies & Gentlemen; February 22nd is known as International Wildlife Day, partly due to the fact that it honors Australian Wildlife Expert; Steve Irwin (22 February 1962 – 4 September 2006).

In 1996, Steve came from seemingly out of nowhere to become one of the world’s most famous television stars. The Crocodile Hunter aired its final episode on September 4, 2007, one year after Irwin was killed when a stingray pierced his chest during the filming of a documentary, Ocean’s Deadliest. Yet Irwin’s legacy has carried on, both through repeated viewings of his hit series and with the help of his family: wife Terri, daughter Bindi Sue, and son Bob. Here are a few things you might not have known about him.

1. Steve Irwin grew up at a zoo. Steve Irwin discovered his love of animals, and talent for handling them, at an early age. “My dad was a wildlife expert,” Irwin told Larry King in 2004. “His field was herpetology, one who studies reptiles, and my mom was a wildlife rehabilitator.” When Irwin was still a child, his family moved to Beerwah, near Queensland, Australia, to open the Beerwah Reptile Park in 1970. Steve spent his formative years helping to run the park, including feeding the animals, and eventually became its owner. It’s still in operation, but is now called the Australia Zoo.

2. Steve Irwin met his wife, Terri, at the Australia Zoo. Though Steve Irwin was the indisputable star of The Crocodile Hunter, his family (including his wife, Terri) played an integral role in the series. Much like her husband, Terri discovered her love of animals at an early age. She was born in Eugene, Oregon, where her family ran a trucking business and her father would regularly bring home injured animals he’d come across on the road. In 1986, Terri opened Cougar Country, a facility that helped rehabilitate foxes, raccoons, bobcats, bears, and, of course, cougars and release them back into the wild. In 1991, Terri took a trip to Australia and visited the Australia Zoo, where she first laid eyes on Steve during one of his crocodile shows. “I was absolutely floored,” Terri told Barbara Walters in 2006. “That was it. This man was a real-life hero. I fell then and there, love at first sight, not a problem. I said to my friend, ‘I got to meet this guy.’” The couple got engaged just four months later.

3. The first episode of The Crocodile Hunter was filmed during Steve and Terri Irwin’s honeymoon. Appropriately, Steve and Terri spent their honeymoon traveling around Australia trapping crocodiles for relocation. Then they got a call “that there was a crocodile that needed help,” Terri recounted to Scientific American. “We dropped our honeymoon, we went to north Queensland, and we helped this crocodile and filmed a documentary on the premise that the cameraman just chases Steve around. Steve hadn’t been to acting school, he had no preconceived notions. His background was exactly what you see on television, he’s done that all his life. We thought we’d do one show. What happened was, it did really well, so we did a part two. And from then on, we found that Steve’s natural behavior in the wild happens to be fascinating!” Recognizing that Steve’s enthusiasm would be a huge draw for audiences, Animal Planet picked up The Crocodile Hunter as a regular series.

4. Irwin believed his enthusiasm was the key to The Crocodile Hunter’s success. When asked by Scientific American about what he attributed the show’s immense popularity to, Irwin quipped, “Nothing to do with my looks, that’s for sure! Yeah, I normally get a big croc out in the foreground of any filming.” But he did have a real theory: “You know what I reckon it is? My belief is that what comes across on the television is a capture of my enthusiasm and my passion for wildlife. Since I was a boy, from this house, I was out rescuing crocodiles and snakes. My mum and dad were very passionate about that, and I was lucky enough to go along. The first crocodile I ever caught was at 9 years of age, and it was a rescue. So now what happens is the cameras follow me around and capture exactly what I’ve been doing since I was a boy. Only now we have a team of, you know, like 73 of us, and it’s gone beyond that.

“As the audience, I want you to come with me, right? So we get cameras, every one of us, if we’ve got a four- or five-man film crew, including myself and Terri. Every one of us can use a camera. I have one in my green backpack that I pull out for the hardcore shots where you’ve gotta get right in there, so the camera’s always right there, in there, while I’m doing my thing. So when I’m talking to the camera, I’m talking to you, in your living room.”

5. The show’s popularity spread far beyond America. Though The Crocodile Hunter was a huge hit in America as well as in Irwin’s native Australia, its popularity reached far beyond those two countries. The series was seen, and beloved, by more than 500 million people in 130 countries around the world.

6. Creating awareness about conservationism was the show’s main goal. While many viewers tuned into The Crocodile Hunter to witness Irwin’s zany antics while going head-to-head with some of the world’s most feared creatures, Irwin’s main goal was to educate the public about these animals and dispel the many myths surrounding them. “I’ve always seen Jacques Cousteau as a hero,” he said. “He’s a legend, like my dad, just a legend. And so what he did for conservation in the ‘60s through the ‘70s was just phenomenal. And I want to be just like him, you know? I want to have a milestone, you know? I want to create history. So we’ve gone beyond the media that we’re working with now, and we’re taking the media, we’re taking the ‘Croc Hunter’ message, we’re taking conservation, and the greening of our planet to kids’ toys, to shirts, you know, our shirts will be an advertisement of conservation. It’s like we’re taking it to the nth degree. In fact, we probably won’t stop there either. If there’s another medium where we can just get people excited about conservation we’ll take it, we’ll run with it.”