Living up to Steve Irwin legacy

RICK MADONIK/TORONTO STAR
With help from Wes Mannion, Terri Irwin handles a lion cub at G’Day Toronto Australian tourism show.
As I walked across the 25th floor of the Metropolitan Hotel yesterday, I was feeling a bit uneasy.
Not about interviewing Terri Irwin, per se. But more about saying the wrong thing, however accidental, to somebody who has already endured such unfathomable tragedy.
Irwin was in town for G'Day Toronto, an Australian tourism festival that ended Sunday and included a performance by her 8-year-old daughter, Bindi.
Promoting the land Down Under was a role Terri's late husband, Steve "The Crocodile Hunter" Irwin, shouldered with blistering gusto. "For the last 14 years, Steve was the personification of everything that was Australia," says Terri.

Steve was killed in September after a stingray's poisonous barb punctured his heart, a freak accident that unleashed a deluge of global sorrow.

"No one would have been more shocked at the outpouring of grief than Steve would've been," says Terri. "Steve was such an immense person in so many ways. I never realized how much I depended on him until he was gone ...

"After losing Steve, it does kind of feel like I'm free-falling. From time to time, I think, `How can I do this without Steve here?'"

But during these moments, she focuses on his indefatigable advocacy when it came to the environment, conservation and everything that might fall under the rubric of a Wildlife Warrior.

"The determination I have to try to continue Steve's work and make the world a better place is so important," Terri says. "I'm not Steve. I can't do what he did. And I wouldn't pretend to try to fill his shoes.

"But we can no longer sit back and say, `I carpool to work and recycle, therefore I'm making a difference to the planet.' We have to fight."

The couple met in 1992 when the Oregon-born Terri was vacationing in Australia. She never left. Does she ever miss America, especially now?

"I miss my family and friends," she says. "And the wildlife is so dramatically different over here in North America than it is in Australia. But I've really come to love the country and I would never leave."

Does she get enough privacy?

"I get plenty of time on my own," Terri says. "I live in Australia Zoo. I have a very private home. We've got three bedrooms, one bathroom ...

"The carpets are rose-coloured, which grossed Steve out, but I love it. He let me do everything the way I wanted. The house is just warm and cozy and small."

Her eyes get wide as she adds: "When I hang clothes on the line I can hear tigers, elephants, lemurs, crocodiles, blue-winged kookaburras, macaws and dingoes – every single day."

Both of Terri's children, Bindi and 3-year-old Robert, were in Toronto. "Because he's not in weather this cold very often, little Robert said to me, `There's smoke coming out of my mouth!'" says Terri. "So he figures you come to Toronto and you turn into a dragon."

I ask her about Robert's older sister, specifically, criticism that Bindi may be spending too much time in the spotlight.

"I get to see her when the camera doesn't," counters Terri. "I see her when she's at Disneyland or when she's playing with her teddy bear or when she's poking her brother."

But Bindi, who was visiting the CN Tower yesterday, seems beyond precocious. I mean, it's like she's 8-going-on-40.

"Isn't it weird?" asks Terri. "She's so much like Steve. She has an uncanny wisdom beyond her years. There is something really unusual about Bindi. It's who she is. It's not something you can cultivate."

On Sunday night, for example, Bindi was reluctant to leave the side of a wallaby here in town.

"I said, `Bindi, you have a field of wallabies back home,'" Terri recalls. "But she said, `Yeah, but I just need a wallaby fix. I miss them.' So I said, `Okay, hug and kiss the wallaby for a while.'"

Another time, Bindi noted her mother wasn't in high spirits and said something remarkable.

"I said, `I just really miss your daddy. It's a hard day today,'" says Terri. "And she said, `I tell you what. I'll go in the house with Robert. You stay out here and cry.' It was so cute."