Two decades on from Steve Irwin's death at Batt Reef in September 2006, the conservationist better known as the Crocodile Hunter remains one of the most recognisable Australians ever to wear khaki. His story started small: born in Melbourne in 1962, he grew up at his parents' Beerwah Reptile Park on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, catching his first venomous brown snake at six and wrestling crocodiles into a dinghy by nine.
By his twenties, Irwin was catching problem crocodiles for the Queensland Government in Far North Queensland, developing capture-and-release methods researchers still use. Then came the twist of fate that changed everything: two days after taking over the family park in October 1991, he met American tourist Terri Raines, who ran her own wildlife rescue in Oregon. They married within a year and spent their honeymoon filming crocodile relocations — footage that became The Crocodile Hunter. After Animal Planet picked it up in 1996, the show ran for 11 years, aired in 142 countries and reached more than 500 million viewers.
The park the couple renamed Australia Zoo in 1992 became the anchor of an expanding conservation operation. They set up the Wildlife Warriors charity in 2002 and bought land across Queensland for habitat protection. The on-site wildlife hospital, which began life in a renovated avocado-packing shed, opened as a purpose-built facility in 2004, named for Irwin's mother Lyn. Today it is Australia's largest wildlife hospital, treating up to 10,000 animals a year.
Irwin's death, after a stingray barb pierced his chest while he filmed in shallow water at the Great Barrier Reef, shocked the world — around 300 million people watched his memorial service. But the work kept going. Australia Zoo and Wildlife Warriors now protect more than 180,000 hectares of habitat, including the 135,000-hectare Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve in Cape York, where a partnership with the University of Queensland has run one of the world's longest-running crocodile studies since 2007. His children, Bindi and Robert, carry the family name forward at the zoo.
For travellers, this is more than nostalgia. Australia Zoo in Beerwah is an easy day trip from Brisbane or a short hop up the Sunshine Coast, and it remains one of the few places where you can see conservation, education and a working wildlife hospital under one banner. Pair it with the Glass House Mountains next door, or go further afield to Cape York's wild far north, where the crocodile research Irwin helped pioneer continues. There's even a dedicated Steve Irwin Day each 15 November — and an asteroid named 57567 Crikey orbiting overhead.
