Spring's deadly sting for Irwin
13 November 2006

September 4 should have been a typical day's filming for Steve Irwin - but in this extract from his new book, Richard Shears details how it all went so tragically wrong.


On that fatal morning of Monday September 4, Irwin and his group had their final discussion on board Croc One about what they were going to film that day.

As well as Irwin, there were the two cameramen, Craig Lucas - a freelancer who had only recently completed an underwater course, but had been picked by Irwin to help with the filming - and Justin Lyons, who had filmed Irwin for many years; Philippe Cousteau, grandson of the famous ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau; Dr Jamie Seymour, a marine biologist from James Cook University; and John Stainton, Irwin's long-time friend and manager who had "discovered" him and introduced him to the world. Skipper Chris Reed was also there.

Justin Lyons gathered his camera equipment together as Irwin prepared himself for the dive.

They climbed into the white inflatable dinghy and Irwin dived into the water. As an old mate, Lyons was accustomed to Irwin pushing the limits and getting into all kinds of scrapes.

Once, they had visited the Indonesian island of Flores to film the huge komodo dragons. These reptiles grow to three metres and can effortlessly bite through an arm or leg. Irwin and the crew had a narrow escape, breaking a camera as they leaped out of harm's way when one of the dragons charged. Lyons recalled later: "They're sort of placid, but they can turn very quickly."

He was not to know how relevant those words would be when related to stingrays.

About half a kilometre away, Pete West stood on the deck of his boat Deepstar with marine biologist and friend, Teresa Carrette, while two of his dive crew were in the water checking equipment and getting ready for the afternoon's filming. It was shortly after 11am.

They watched the white inflatable dinghy from Irwin's launch bobbing about several hundred metres away. They guessed he was just below somewhere, probably no more than 2m down, enjoying his swim with the rays. They hoped that Lyons and the second cameraman, Craig Lucas, who were down there with him, were getting some good footage.

As he continued going about his business on Deepstar, West paid no further attention to the dinghy - until, curiously, he heard its motor getting louder. The inflatable was racing towards Deepstar. Something was up.

Then Lyons was yelling up at West: "It's Steve! He's been hit by a stingray!"

West stared down in horror. At Irwin lying face up and motionless on the floor of the dinghy beside Lyons' camera. A chill ran through West. There was a wound in Irwin's chest - right over the heart. Blood was spreading rapidly. West quickly glanced towards Croc One. There was no indication that anyone on board was aware of what had happened.

West had some medical experience from his days working on oil rigs but he knew that the attention Irwin required was far beyond his expertise. In their almost blind panic, the men filled the air with expletives. They were a long way from the urgent kind of medical help that Irwin needed, but West believed he should be sped back to Croc One where the marine biologist Seymour might know what to do about such a terrible wound.

As Lyons turned the dinghy around and raced at full throttle to the distant launch, West grabbed the radio handset and hit the emergency VHF channel 16. Frustratingly, there was no response from the Port Douglas Coast Guard on that channel, so he tried calling up help from the next nearest coast guard station in Cairns, some 50km south of Port Douglas.

His voice was trembling as he made the call. It was 11.21am. "Coast Guard Cairns! Coast Guard Cairns! This is Deepstar. We are in need of immediate medical assistance!" He received an immediate response. West did not say who the victim was in that first exchange but on Croc One skipper Reed heard the cry for help over his radio. Stainton and Reed dashed to the rear of the boat and saw the dinghy speeding towards them. They knew that something terrible had happened. Then they saw Irwin lying in his blood on the floor of the dinghy. The conservationist's limp body was hauled on to the back duckboard after Stainton had cut free a second dinghy moored there and which was in the way. Seymour examined Irwin, but hope faded with every passing second.

On the radio to Cairns Coast Guard, Seymour switched to the closed channel 73, so he could discuss further urgent action without interruption from other vessels' skippers who would have picked up the initial distress call.

Seymour commandeered the radio. He knew how bad it was. He told the coastguard that an emergency evacuation was needed. The crew felt like they were living through a nightmare. Irwin, their friend, their workmate, was lying on the deck with what they feared was a fatal wound in his chest. He did not appear to be breathing. He was certainly not moving. They felt for a pulse and could find none. Yet there was not a man who was prepared to believe that Irwin was dead. Someone tried the kiss of life. They tried kick- starting his heart with CPR to no avail. Stainton told himself that Irwin was dead, yet he would not, could not, say it to anyone, although he suspected that the others were now thinking the same thing.

There was one more desperate call to be made as, back on land an emergency helicopter was preparing to take off. Seymour called West on Deepstar and now West learned just how serious the incident was.

"Do you have a defibrillator there?" asked Seymour.

"Negative," replied West. There were no heart-starters on his boat. "Oxygen, yes, but sorry, no defibrillator." Now West knew from the question that Irwin's heart had stopped. They were miles from anywhere. What hope did Irwin have now?

Back on board Croc One there was no question of just spinning around and racing at full throttle towards Low Isles, halfway between Batt Reef and Port Douglas, where there was a heliport. The slightest mistake and Croc One would hit the reef - the coral had to be negotiated with great caution. As Reed worked his way through the reef and then opened up the throttle, the crew crowded around the still body of Irwin, praying, cursing, hitting his chest, slapping his wrists. Terri was far away in Tasmania somewhere - what the hell were they going to tell her?

As Croc One headed away into the distance, West turned his own vessel towards the abandoned inflatable that Irwin had been using. He recovered it and a second dinghy that had also been left behind. No one on Croc One cared about dinghies at a time like this. The underwater camera was still lying in the dinghy. West brought it into the main cabin.

Lyons called up on the radio, concerned about the camera he had abandoned on the dinghy. Croc One had arrived at Low Isles at 11.50am. The emergency helicopter team touched down only 10 minutes later.

West assured Lyons he had recovered the camera. "How's Steve doing?" West then asked.

There was a moment's silence before Lyons replied: "He's in the hands of professionals." Then he continued: "The camera - can you make sure it's secure and also ensure the tape isn't stuffed. It's vital."

West, familiar with the equipment, pressed the playback button. He and Carrette watched the last few seconds on the small viewfinder and were shocked at what they saw. There was a 2.5m ray, with Irwin swimming above. They were about to watch a man die. West was to describe later how he saw graphic footage in a medium to wide shot as the ray suddenly whipped up its deadly tail and struck Irwin in the chest with a barb. He knew then that Irwin had no chance of survival. In that fatal moment Irwin instinctively grabbed the barb and tore it from his chest. It was the last move the Crocodile Hunter would make.

The effort to keep him alive had been frantic. When Croc One reached Low Isles, with the rescue helicopter still on the way, the crew of a charter boat Wave Dancer, owned by dive company Quicksilver, also tried to revive him, this time with a defibrillator, without success.

Enid Traill, a nurse who was on holiday, was taking a stroll around the island, mingling with some 50 other tourists enjoying a sightseeing or diving day out, when she heard someone counting "one... two... three!" Instinctively she knew what that meant. A medical emergency. Someone's heart being pumped. Moments later, she saw a group of men carrying someone up the beach. It was a confusing scene, for there was a camera crew there, too. She thought perhaps that it had just been a movie or a documentary, after all. But the faces of the men were grim. It was too real. The holder of advanced resuscitation qualifications, she hurried over.

"Can I help? I'm a nurse." Heads nodded frantically. They carried the limp figure into a boat shed, Traill still unaware of who the man was. The daughter of the late Jack Spender, known as "Mr Lifesaving" in Queensland after setting up the association's state headquarters, 55-year-old Traill took over the CPR. "I knew it was a terrible situation because we couldn't get any air into his lungs," she recalled later. "We tried and tried for 10 minutes or so, but it was all to no avail."

The paramedics arrived on a Careflight helicopter from Queensland Helicopter Rescue. The medical team also had no idea who the victim was. As they took over from Traill, she watched helplessly as they "examined the hole in his heart".

One of the paramedics asked: "Have we got an ID on this man?" Stainton stepped forward. "It's Steve Irwin," he said. There was a moment's silence. "Are we talking about the Steve Irwin?" the paramedic asked.

"Yes," said John.

Traill looked to the medical team in shock. It was a terrible moment, one she would never forget, for, curiously, she had known Irwin as a teenager when he would call at her family's marine refrigeration business in Caloundra to see one of the apprentices who worked there.

"The fact that he was from home and someone I knew made the impact greater on me. I would rather say I wasn't there, but I was."

She remembered how he would turn up at the workshop with lizards in his pockets and how, in recent years, he would help to support fundraising activities for the Dicky Beach surf club that Traill is still associated with.

Despite the efforts of everyone - on Croc One, on the shore of the island and in the boat shed - the conclusion was reached that Irwin was beyond all help. He was pronounced dead at 12.53pm, some 90 minutes after he had received that fatal strike.

"They told me he wouldn't have survived even if he'd received that wound in an operating theatre and there was medical help available on the spot," Traill said.

Careflight doctor Ed O'Loughlin confirmed the hopelessness. "It became clear fairly soon he had non- survivable injuries," he said.

Irwin's body was flown to the mainland and then transported to the mortuary at Cairns Hospital.

Could he have been saved if he had not torn the spike from his chest? It seemed unlikely, but in any case medical experts and marine specialists agreed that his instinctive reaction to rip it out before he lapsed into unconsciousness would have increased the damage. Having already been struck in the heart - like a man being hit by a barbed arrow - jerking it out would have resulted in added tearing.

Marine specialist Peter Fenner was convinced that the action would have made matters much worse - "the more you start pulling things around, the more damage you do to yourself," he said as the shock news spread around the world.

A scientist at the Australian Venom Research Unit at Melbourne University, Dr Bryan Fry, believed that leaving the barb in the chest would have stemmed the bleeding, whereas pulling it out would have taken a lot of force and would possibly have caused more damage. The serrations, he said, meant the spike would not slide out like a knife.

Generally, said a surgeon, Hugh Wolfenden, who works at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney, it would not be advisable to remove an object because while still in place it helps to stem the bleeding. On the other hand, leaving it in the heart could also be problematical if the heart was still beating because the action of the heart could result in it lacerating itself against the foreign object.

As for the poison, experts were divided on whether it would have killed Irwin. Geoff Isbister, a clinical toxicologist based at Newcastle's Mater Hospital, north of Sydney, believed that although the venom might have caused tissue damage, the physical trauma to Irwin would have been enough to end his life.

It had been an early spring day in Australia, but that afternoon a chill had settled on the entire country - a chill that spread around the globe like a fast-moving frost.