On September 4, it will be two decades since Australia last heard our beloved crocodile hunter exclaim “Crikey, mate!” with that unmistakeable grin.
But for close friend and collaborator, New Farm’s John Stainton, Steve Irwin has never left him.
“He’s still with me, I can feel it,” Steve’s former producer said.
His legacy lives on in every person who was inspired to treat an animal with kindness.
“He tried to get the message across that every animal has a right to live here with us,” John said.
“He was a person that was a one off; there’s not too many Steves in the world… He looked after everybody around him.”
Despite their frequent proximity to deadly wildlife, his crew always felt safe and protected, John said.
“None of the crew had any fear of these dangerous situations because they knew that he had the welfare of everybody concerned on his shoulders and everyone trusted him.”
“He was incredibly aware of what was around him and he never came close to getting into trouble at all,” he said.
Steve didn’t hesitate to put his life on the line for his team.
“John, I’ll take a bullet for you,” Steve told him regularly.
One of the few mishaps John can recall was the day the crew landed on Rincha Island in the Indonesian archipelago to film some Komodo dragons.
“As we got off the boat, there were two large Komodo dragons in the mangroves eating, catching fish…” John said.
“One of the crew members must have had some food in their backpack… and that was the worst thing that could have happened because they can smell anything from miles away.
“Next thing, both of them – quite big Komodo dragons – came running at us,” he said.
Steve pushed them all out of the way of the “death trap” – but not before their main camera was smashed, leaving them in the middle of nowhere on a very remote island with no camera.
Filming over 200 episodes of various series in 15 years of working with some of the most dangerous animals in the world, John can remember two instances in which Steve saved his life.
The most memorable was being thrown out of the way of a cobra’s fangs in Egypt. Filming on a telephoto lens, John couldn’t see how close the deadly snake was.
“He was heading for my body to bite and the next thing I felt was Steve’s back on mine. He jumped in front of me and threw me… I went up in the air and landed, but he grabbed the snake in the meantime.”
“He saved my life there, because if I had been bitten by that snake, I would have been untreatable because we were in the middle of nowhere,” he said.
The friendship that would lead to them working together all over the world was forged on the advertising set of an iconic Queensland beverage.
It was Power’s beer that first cemented the duo’s friendship, working on a shoot involving two campers and a crocodile.
“One guy gets a can of Power’s beer out of the esky, throws it to the other guy who had his back to the water,” John recounted.
“A crocodile comes out at the same time as he goes to grab the can, and the crocodile tries to catch the can as well.”
John brought Steve on as the crocodile handler for the ad. When asked if the concept would work, Steve said yes, as long as it was his hand in the way of the crocodile’s jaws.
After the shoot, Steve asked John if he would consider making a documentary about his adventures catching crocs up north, and gave him some tapes he’d filmed himself.
John put off watching the tapes Steve gave him until months later, when he realised what he’d been missing.
“When I did look at the first one, I was amazed just how good he was,” John said.
“Instead of looking at the other tapes I rewound the one I just looked at. And it took three hours.
“So I looked at it again and I just was marvelling at it and thinking this is amazing, this guy’s terrific,” he said.
John called a Channel 10 executive and got the go-ahead for the Crocodile Hunter.
“He could handle most animals… He just had that thing about him that he’d grown up with and learnt from his father, who was a crocodile and snake man,” John said.
“It’s definitely something that he’s passed on to his kids as well, even though they were young when he passed away.
“And he’s also passed on to the viewing public the fact that, animals are there to be to be saved, and not killed or shot.”
He was always upset to see an animal get hurt.
“He’d rather go up – as he did over a number of years – and sit out on his own in the dark on a bank and just watch for eye shine and then catch a croc…
“That was part of his life, to remove crocodiles that were going to be shot or killed, take them away and put them in safety in rivers where people don’t really go,” John said.
Steve always had a big heart, and after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami and resulting floods, he flew his entire crew to Indonesia and got their vets to help look after the elephants.
“The things that really suffered were the elephants because [the locals] were using the elephants to… cart stuff around, drag stuff out, to get to people,” John said.
“So they were suffering too because their legs and feet were getting cut [by the debris].”
Despite the cost and the dangerous situation, John said he would have done anything to help the animals.
For a man who would rather spend all night on a muddy riverbank than see a crocodile come to harm, he could also be quite studious.
John said he remembers watching Steve pore over papers and books in preparation for working with overseas wildlife.
“He’d be researching everything we were doing and any animals that we were going to be involved with in any other countries,” John said.
When Steve died in 2006, John had just started producing Bindi, the Jungle Girl, with Steve training Bindi on how to film with animals.
“He was giving her absolute positive beautiful guidance,” John said.
“She’s really very astute… She was just born to take that role over, like her dad.”
When he died, Bindi chose to continue with the series, which took them all over the world.
Steve’s legacy continues with his family’s work at Australia Zoo, his wildlife reserves and the Wildlife Warriors foundation.
“He has transformed the way that lots of people in Australia think about crocodiles and even animals. He really brought that education and compassion,” John said.
