Steve & Me

by Terri Irwin

  Steve was on the pig in a flash. He grabbed it by the back legs, lifted it up wheelbarrow-style, and rolled it on its side. Sui was beside herself with joy, dashing in and out, her barking shrill and excited. The pig that Steve had so quickly overturned clearly weighed more than he did.

  “Come over here quick,” he said.

  I thought, There is no way I am going to be able to hold that pig down. Instead, Steve directed me to grab Sui. Mission accomplished.

  Day after day, Steve checked the traps for the big croc. Now it was a waiting game.

  The Cattle Creek ecosystem teemed with life. It was a favorite spot for fishermen, because wherever you have crocs, you have a healthy fish population. Crocs manage a river system by culling out everything that shouldn’t be there: animals that are weak, old, sick, or young. The crocs get them first. The catfish that had been introduced to Cattle Creek, for example, are much slower swimming than the native barramundi, so the catfish would be eaten first.

  There was plenty of wildlife to film: water pythons, venomous snakes, numerous beautiful birds, koalas, possums, and all kinds of lizards. But the big croc remained elusive.

  Finally we found him. But something was wrong. As we approached, he failed to submerge. We were horrified to discover that the poachers had beaten us—and shot him. It was likely that he had been killed some time ago. Crocs often take a long while to die. They have the astonishing ability to shut off blood supply to an injured part of their body. The big croc had shut down and gone to the bottom of the river, at last, to succumb to his wound. He was huge, some fifteen feet long, fat and in good shape.

  Steve was beside himself; he felt as if the croc’s death was a personal failure. We filmed the croc and talked about what had happened. But eventually, Steve simply had to walk away. When I went to him, there were tears in his eyes. Steve had a genuine love for crocodiles and appreciated each individual animal. This croc could have been fifty years old, with mates, a family, and a history as king of this river. His death wasn’t abstract to Steve. It was personal, as though he had lost a friend, and it fueled his anger toward the poacher who had killed such a magnificent animal.

  Steve knew there was another croc in the area that was also in potential danger. “Maybe if we save that one,” Steve said, with resolve, “we can salvage something out of this trip.”

  He didn’t give up. That night we cruised Cattle Creek again to film the trap sites. It seemed that wherever we went, Steve had an uncanny ability as a wildlife magnet. As we traveled downstream in the boat, he spotted a large carpet python on an overhanging limb.

  We filmed as Steve held on to the python’s tree limb, keeping the boat steady. He talked about the snake, and how it might have been in that tree to hunt fruit bats. Suddenly the tree limb snapped, and both the branch and snake crashed down into the boat.

  Everyone reacted, startled. I had been standing up, and I fell backward into the river.

  Splashing to the surface would only catch a crocodile’s attention, so I let myself sink and then gradually drift up to the surface again. As my head broke the surface, I could see the boat had drifted off. I can remember looking up from the murky water and seeing the spotlight get smaller and smaller. Don’t panic, I told myself, knowing we were right in front of a baited croc trap. I was trying to tread water without making any splashing or “hurt animal”-type movements that would attract a crocodile. I could feel my heart pounding. It was hard to breathe. I was absolutely fighting the panic.

  Steve and the film crew were wrangling branch and snake. The boat motor had quit. Steve frantically attempted to start it. I could hear him swearing in the darkness. The crew member holding the spotlight divided his attention between making sure I was okay and helping Steve see what he was doing. The boat continued to drift farther and farther down the river.

  Just be as motionless as possible, I told myself. I had my teeth clenched in anticipation of feeling a croc’s immense jaw pressure close around my leg.

  Suddenly I heard the engine roar back to life. Steve swung the boat around and gunned it. As soon as he got to me, he dragged me back in. I felt a little sick. I lay there for a moment, but the drama was not over.

  Our cameraman was deathly afraid of snakes, and the carpet python was still in the bottom of the boat. Steve scooped it up. The snake decided it didn’t appreciate the whole ordeal. It swung around and proceeded to grab Steve repeatedly on the forearm, bite after bite after bite.

  Looking back at the footage now, the whole ordeal seems a bit amusing.

  “Ah! Ah! Ah!” a male voice yells. You think it might be Steve, as he is the one being bitten, but actually it was John Stainton. He cries out in sympathy each time the python sinks its teeth into Steve’s arm.

  It sounds as though Steve himself is being terribly injured, when in fact the little tiny pinpricks from the carpet python’s hundreds of teeth were only minor wounds. Although the teeth go deep into the flesh and it bleeds quite readily, there was no permanent scarring, no venom, and no infection.

  “Are you okay, babe?” Steve asked. I told him I was. Shaken, but in one piece. Steve was okay, the python was okay, and even the cameraman seemed to have recovered. We returned the snake to its tree.

  “We might as well go back to camp,” Steve said, mock-sternly. “Thanks to you, we probably won’t catch that croc tonight. You probably scared the living daylights out of him, landing in the water like that.”

  That night, lying exhausted in my swag, covered with salt water and river mud, I had a single thought running through my mind over and over. Thank God that Steve was there. Wherever I was in the Australian bush, whatever I was doing, I resolved that Steve had to be with me. I felt that as long as he was there, no matter what accident or incident happened, I knew I would be fine.

  It wasn’t just that I knew Steve would protect me and that his knowledge of the bush was so complete. I was beginning to sense something we would both come to feel and talk about seriously. When we were together, nothing bad would happen. Apart, we might be vulnerable. It was hard to explain, but it was as if the universe had brought us together and now we were as one. Whatever it was, we both felt it.

  The next morning I would learn just how lucky I was to have Steve with me the night before, adrift in croc water.

  Steve got up before me and left to check the trap. The fire was already going when I crawled out of my swag. I relived the events of the night before over my cup of tea.

  I heard the boat motor and saw that Steve was coming back, so I got up and ran down to the riverbank to meet him.

  “We got one,” he said, breathless. “A croc went in that trap after all, mate.”

  “I guess maybe my splashing around attracted it,” I said with a grin.

  He laughed. Then he turned and yelled up to the guys, “Cooee!” The whole camp erupted into action. The film crew grabbed their gear, and we went to rescue the crocodile before a poacher’s bullet could claim it.

  I didn’t know what to expect. I had heard stories of Steve catching crocodiles. I’d seen photographs and some of his video footage. Steve took me into the crocodile enclosures at the zoo. But this was something I’d never experienced. This was in the wild.

  As we approached the trap, the crocodile heard the boat motor and started thrashing. In the dim, early-morning light, all I could see was the net moving violently back and forth, a large, muddy-colored croc caught within. It was a magnificent animal. Not as big as the last crocodile, but a lumpy, bumpy dinosaur all the same.

  Steve had secured the trap to a tree. The crocodile was cinched up inside, since the mouth of the trap drew shut when the weight bag dropped. Steve needed to secure the weight bag separately and get the trap stabilized, while still avoiding those jaws.

  I watched him work. He retied several knots in quick succession. Once he was satisfied that it was safe, he could take into consideration the film crew and me. He explained to me what we were going to do. The object would be to get the crocodi
le out of the trap. We needed it completely unencumbered to be able to move it to a new location.

  The mesh trap was tangled in the croc’s teeth and claws. We needed to carefully untangle it. As we approached the croc, my adrenaline surged. I could feel my fingertips tingling, and my mouth went dry.

  Steve positioned the camera crew so they could have the best vantage point without risk of getting nailed. Then he turned to me.

  “Right,” he said. “You jump on its head and I’ll get the net off.”

  Um…what? I thought surely I’d misunderstood.

  “Right,” Steve shouted. “Now!”

  So I jumped on the crocodile’s head.

  I lay down as flat as possible and flung my arms around its head. The croc struggled. As it swung around with me on top, I hung on for dear life, hoping I wouldn’t feel those teeth on my arms. I was finally able to pin down its head.

  Steve began at the tail end, rolling the trawler mesh back, working the net under the croc’s massive tail. Half a crocodile’s body length is taken up by its tail. Steve slipped one back leg out of the net, then another. He pushed the mesh up farther, now working directly underneath me.

  I slid from one side of the crocodile to the other, always keeping my arms around the head so the croc couldn’t swing around and nail Steve. As we worked, the sweat dripped off my face, as well as all the bug spray I had on. The mozzies feasted, but I hardly noticed.

  My heart pounded. The crocodile would relax, but then I would feel it tense like a horse about to buck, and then my world would explode into wild thrashing, with the croc trying to shake me off. I hung on as tightly as possible.

  I pressed my cheek against the top of the croc’s head and got a close-up view of the head shields and calcium deposits on top of its skull. The croc would exhale, and I felt its warm, odorless breath blowing up into my bangs, brushing across my face. I felt so special as I closed my eyes to experience each breath. I was beginning to understand Steve’s spiritual connection with these ancient reptiles.

  Every once in a while, the crocodile would let out a guttural growl. Even though its jaws were partially held by the mesh, it was daunting to be in such close proximity to three thousand pounds per square inch of jaw pressure.

  Steve gathered the mesh of the trap around the crocodile’s head. This was the most dangerous part. He traded places with me and worked his hands under the net, wrapping his hands around the croc’s jaws as he eased its head out of the trap.

  The croc was free, with only Steve’s hands clamping shut its jaws. We bound its snout and slipped on a blindfold to settle it down. Next, we determined that it was a female and measured her. She wasn’t even ten feet long, but when I was lying on top of her, it felt like I was holding down a dragon.

  Crocodiles have been on the planet for some sixty-five million years, looking just about like this one. They’ve evolved to be the most complex apex predator in their environment. They have a life expectancy similar to ours, and their physiology is surprisingly similar to ours as well: the same basic type of four-chambered heart, and a cerebral cortex. I marveled at the sixty-four long, very sharp, peg-like teeth. Here was an animal able to capture and kill animals much larger than itself.

  How ironic, I thought, that this-top-of-the-food-chain animal needs our help.

  As we motored up the river, I restrained the croc on the floor of the boat. I could feel Steve’s reverence for her. He didn’t just like crocodiles. He loved them.

  We finally came to a good release location. We got the crocodile out onto a sandbar and slipped the ropes and blindfolds and trappings off her. She scuttled back into the water.

  “She’ll be afraid of boats from now on,” Steve said. “She’ll never get caught again. She’ll have a good, healthy fear of humans, too. It’ll help keep her alive.”

  Forever afterward, Steve and I referred to the Cattle Creek rescue as our honeymoon trip. It also marked the beginning of Steve’s filming career. He was gifted with the ability to hunt down wildlife. But he hunted animals to save them, not kill them.

  That’s how the Crocodile Hunter was born.

  Chapter Six

  Zoo

  In spite of the death of the big croc, I felt that our time at Cattle Creek had been superb. Even before we got back to the zoo and saw the footage, there was a hint in the air that something special had been accomplished.

  We were elated at saving one crocodile and bitterly disappointed at the one that had been shot. Perhaps Steve felt the failure to save the Cattle Creek croc from poachers more strongly than I did. He was normally an action man, focused on his next project. I wasn’t used to him being gloomy or fixated on mortality. But he kept asking me to promise him that I’d keep the zoo going if something happened to him.

  “Promise me,” he said, wanting me to say it out loud.

  I solemnly promised him that I would keep the zoo going. “But nothing’s going to happen,” I said lightly, “because the secret to being a great conservationist is living a long time.”

  On the drive back to the zoo, we had talked for a long time, a marathon conversation. We didn’t know whether our Cattle Creek documentary would make a huge difference or not. But we agreed that through our zoo and our shared life together, we would try to change the world.

  I told him about my days working at the vet hospital in Oregon, and the times I’d sit on the floor and weep, I’d be so overwhelmed by the pain and suffering visited upon innocent animals. But that burden seemed much easier to bear now, because I had someone to share it with. Steve truly understood how I felt. And I was someone who could sympathize with the depth of his dedication to wildlife.

  There was a big wide world out there. We were just a small wildlife park in Australia. It was absurd to think the two of us could change the world. But our love seemed to make the impossible appear not only possible, but inevitable.

  I look back on the talk we had during the ride to the zoo from Cattle Creek as helping to create the basis of our marriage. No matter what problems came along, we were determined to stay together, because side by side we could face anything.

  Back at the zoo, while the documentary was being edited and before it was aired on Australian television, our sense of purpose became more firmly settled than ever. We officially took over stewardship of the zoo from Lyn and Bob, Steve’s parents, who had founded it in 1970 as the Beerwah Reptile Park. We wanted to make them proud.

  The new name would be simply Australia Zoo. We would build and expand. We wanted to increase viewing access to the croc enclosures so more people could see and appreciate these wonderful animals. We had grand plans.

  We worked to make ends meet. We judged it a good Sunday if we had one hundred visitors, perhaps six hundred and fifty dollars in gross receipts. But running a business isn’t just monitoring income, balancing the books, and ensuring quality. Part of any business person’s plan has to include a vision for the future. Steve could look at an open, weed-choked field and see gardens, walkways, new environ ments for animals. His mind buzzed with projects.

  It takes vision, and hard work. I would watch Steve planting trees, moving earth, and landscaping. He milled his own timber to build enclosures. He worked from dawn until well after dark, when he rigged spotlights to be able to keep working. I had never seen anything like it. He was a machine. He would go past human endurance. Often I’d catch him throwing up behind a tree out of sheer physical exhaustion.

  “Don’t worry about it. I just drank too much tea this morning,” he said after one such incident, when I expressed my concern. He continued with the job.

  Running a zoo meant being able to work with wildlife, yes. But I discovered there was so much more to it. Steve had an apprenticeship in diesel fitting, so he could operate and repair the backhoes, vehicles, and machines necessary to run the zoo. He laid brick and concrete, designed enclosures, and had an eye like an interior decorator for the end result of all his work. It didn’t just have to be sturdy and well-built. I
t had to look good, too.

  Over the course of several years in the early 1990s, I helped as Steve developed and expanded the zoo. Funds were limited. Steve did much of the work himself, making what little money we had stretch that much further. He wouldn’t even have one project finished and would already be dreaming up visions of another.

  It seemed like there weren’t enough hours in the day, no matter how hard we worked. Luckily, we had at the zoo an amazing creature that would always give us an instant reality check, putting all our ambitions in perspective.

  Harriet was a giant Galapagos land tortoise. She fascinated me. The original story was that she had been brought to Australia by whalers. Given the fact that whalers used these gentle creatures as food on long ocean voyages, Steve and I both considered this story highly unlikely. But how else could Harriet have wound up here?

  We tracked her story with tortoise expert Scott Thomson, piecing together an amazing biography that would never be conclusively proved but was eminently plausible.

  We believed Harriet had been collected in 1835 by Charles Darwin himself. She was brought to Australia from England in 1841 by Captain Wickham aboard the HMS Beagle. Actually, three giant Galapagos tortoises had been donated to the Brisbane Botanic Gardens, after Darwin realized they did not flourish in England, where he had originally taken them in 1835.

  How could we determine whether Harriet was one of the Darwin Three? Scott Thomson found a giant tortoise in the collection of the Queensland Museum that had been mislabeled an Aldabran tortoise. Carved on the carapace was the animal’s name, “Tom,” and “1929.” We now had potentially found two of the three Darwin tortoises. Harriet and Tom had been seen together in living memory. The third tortoise was never found and was presumed buried somewhere in the botanic gardens. Harriet lived on.

  Steve and I became very excited at this news. Our studies and research into Harriet’s history continued for years, and it was amazing to learn what a special resident we had at the zoo.