Steve…

I guess like a lot of Australians I was just stunned to hear that Steve Irwin had died. It was all so sudden. I felt like I had lost a friend and all of a sudden I felt a long way from home.

He was over the top and with an accent you could cut with a knife, but you couldn’t help but like the guy and get caught up by his enthusiasm and interest for nature.

He joined us in our living rooms all across the country and we grew up with him -taking a fresh look at creatures and our island home that we had long since taken for granted. Like a lot of Aussie icons, he was a part of the national furniture. One of the family.

Our country has sometimes struggled with the cultural cringe - coming to turns with its identity after leaving the empire and then soon after overwhelmed by the tidal wave of emerging U.S. pop culture. But these people let us know it was OK to be just who we were – a nation of self-deprecating, friendly, laconic, occasionally a bit daggy, self-reliant people wanting to live quietly and peacefully in our little corner of the Pacific.

The list of his fellow icons includes many names known mainly to ourselves – like entertainer Ricky May, Shirl ‘the Curl’ of iconic 70’s band Skyhooks, Graham ‘Gra-Gra’ Kennedy, Ruth Cracknell of ‘Mother & son’ & continues back to Simpson and his Donkey at Gallipoli who died ferrying others to safety.

Our pantheon of heroes doesn’t worship Mammon’s disciples, nor those who win medals in flashy displays of glory, just ordinary men and women with a lot of courage who helped define a nation or who quietly helped others instead of themselves with a characteristic ‘she’ll be right’, and just ‘got on with the job’.

We lost Steve this week. I just hope we don’t ever lose what he and a lot of other great men and women stood for.

Advance Australia Fair…