Caroline is related to Christine B Joy and Madonna R Joy as well as 3 additional people. They have also lived in Trafford, PA and North Huntingdon, PA. The most touching parts of the book, which we highly recommend, were the more personal reflections (apart from the more logistical dynamics of the activity of crocodile hunting itself which tends to drag the storyline but what would one expect from a book entitled The Last Crocodile Hunter 🙂 ) when Bob recalls his last day with his son before Steve Irwin’s untimely death (on 4 September 2006 while diving in Queensland) and ironically in the Epilogue when Amanda French shares her thoughts at the end of a three week exploratory trip with Bob to Koolatah Station, Cape York, Australia in September 2015.Įnter your email address to subscribe to Elephant Spoken Here and receive notifications of new posts by email.Personal life. For Steve, a naturally gregarious child, would soon make connections that would forever change his life and give voice to wildlife conservation with his never-waning enthusiasm for the conservation of crocodiles. As a child Steve ( Stephen Robert Irwin born 22 February 1962, incidentally on his mother’s 20 th birthday) was guided by Bob on their routine trips out into the Australian bush, both led by their love of wildlife and reptiles, in particular.Īs the boy grew into a man the knowledge gained from crocodile hunting had now evolved into the father taking lessons from his son and that is just how Bob liked it. It is not difficult to see how a man who had such a close relationship with his father could become a loving father himself. (p73/294) He was only 2 ½ feet long when re-homed to their reptile park.
It was a laborious venture (building a wildlife park from scratch including a home for the family) which led to their involvement with the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Services when Bob was asked to catch ‘ freshies‘ freshwater crocodiles for a government relocation program. Their new life would revolve around reptiles with their family business becoming the Beerwah Reptile Park (opened on 3 June 1970). He was not one to walk away from a hard day’s work.
Ultimately Bob and Lyn’s decision to ‘follow their dream’ (p35/294 Adobe) and their passions in life led to them packing up their young family (daughters Joy, Mandy & son Steve) and moving from Melbourne to Queensland, Australia.Įven still, crocodiles ain’t pretty.* So devoting one’s life to the reptiles takes a special man (and woman as his wife Lyn (Lynette Leslie Hakainsson Irwin) was very much a part of the animal caring bit only more with the injured and orphaned wildlife than the ‘salties’. He knew that he was not so much driven to be a plumber as he had looked for an excuse to spend time with his dad. (Now, one cannot get any more physical than jumping onto the backs of crocodiles a ‘ saltie‘# weighs well over 2000 pounds but more on that later.)Īs his dad retired from plumbing Bob discovered that his interest had waned, too. He loved the physical aspect of that work, the digging. Then when his dad got into building septic tanks (p22/294) Bob became enthusiastic about that.
It’s a life not without tragedy including the loss of all his worldly possessions (p136-137) before the tragic loss of his beloved wife and his famous son.īob’s first career was as a plumber inspired by his loving step-father who had a trade of his own. Not a perfect man by any means but one who finds peace among animals rather than in the middle of a (human) crowd. The Bob Irwin you come to know in his book “ The Last Crocodile Hunter, A Father and Son Legacy” written with Amanda French, is unassuming yet unwavering in his convictions which took him far in life. It was his son Steve Irwin who shone and took to the spotlight giving his dad a place just out of reach of the cameras, a place Bob was much more comfortable with. It’s not every day that you discover a man so devoted to the conservation of wildlife, namely crocodiles, to whom so few accolades have been given.
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