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Good Reading : November 2007
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12 goodreading ı NOVEMBER 2007 cover story steve and terri: a love story The whole nation — indeed, the whole world — mourned when we heard of the death of wildlife warrior Steve Irwin. Now his grieving widow TERRI IRWIN has written an uplifting book, My Steve, about their life together and about Steve’s undying vision. ALISON PRESSLEY talked to her about the book and the future. When we remember that endearing, iconic figure dressed in khakis, wrestling a croc and exclaiming ‘Crikey!’, it’s easy to concentrate on the showman and forget the serious research and commitment that lay behind all the filmed scenes. The fact that Professor Craig E Franklin of the University of Queensland has written the foreword to Terri Irwin’s tribute to her late husband serves to remind us of that scholarship and dedication.Terri tells us, among other things, how shamefully little we know about these magnificent creatures in the wild, and how much Steve was contributing to accumulating scientific data. That’s the serious side of this irrepressibly passionate, fun- loving man. One of Terri’s motives in writing the book was to show Steve Irwin the man rather than just the world-famous Crocodile Hunter. Above everything, My Steve is a love story: one woman’s account of life with the love of her life, and of his untimely death. It’s a heart-wrenching but also upbeat tale, full of wild adventure, deep family ties and total commitment to wildlife conservation. Terri Raines, from Oregon, USA, stumbled into Steve Irwin’s life by accident – except you can’t help thinking that fate had a lot to do with it.Terri was already involved in wild- life conservation in the States, and in 1991 was in Australia to find homes for rescued American cougars. She saw what was then called the Queensland Reptile and Fauna Park from the passenger window of a friend’s car and decided to pay a visit, although pessimistic about the chances of the park being interested in taking cougars.While there, she met Steve and watched incredulous as he fed the crocs and listened even more incredulous as he recounted tales of wrangling and capturing ‘troublesome’ crocs so that they didn’t get shot. Terri writes: ‘I had never, ever believed in love at first sight. But I had the strangest, most overwhelming feeling that it was destiny that took me into that little wildlife park that day.’ She tells a lovely story of finding out if Steve had a girlfriend or not. Just as she was wondering, he volunteered, ‘Would you like to meet my girlfriend?’Terri’s whole spirit sank, but she gamely smiled and said, ‘I’d love to.’ At which point Steve called his little brin- dle Staffordshire bull terrier, Sui, over to them. ‘Here’s me girlfriend,’ said Steve with a smile. For Terri, that was it. No turning back. I asked Terri if writing the book had been a cathartic expe- rience. ‘I think perhaps in the future I will gain that healing from going over everything,’ she responded, ‘but to be perfectly honest it was incredibly difficult. I think because I started the process in February when things were pretty raw, and the good memories were difficult because I miss him; I remembered hard times. But I’m certainly proud of doing it, I’m glad I did it, and I’m very happy with the result.’ We all know the bare bones of the story of their success and the birth of their two children, Bindi and Bob, but in My Steve Terri fleshes out the reality of their lives, including their initial poverty and making the first videos of Steve in action with filmmaker John Stainton (on their honeymoon!), the beginning of the Crocodile Hunter legend – hunting animals to save them, not kill them. Terri describes Steve as the consummate bushman, never ever fazed by anything he encountered in the wild. ‘Watching Steve around the camp was witnessing a man at one with his environment.’Their trips together into the bush are described with a vivid immediacy – Terri was as smitten by the Australian landscape, flora and fauna as she was by her ‘Australian action hero’. She also writes of her strong initial feeling that together, nothing bad would ever happen to them. Apart, they were each vulnerable.That gut feeling never left her during all their years together – happy years, mostly. The book is filled with exciting wildlife stories, including a heartbreaking whale stranding in Tasmania; relocating ‘the black ghost’, the giant croc Acco; bonding with a mother orang utan; getting poisoned by a euphorbia plant in the Kalahari Desert;
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