Circumspencing the Globe

My travels along the so-called Sunshine Coast in Queensland, the so-called Sunshine State, continue.  It was raining when I left Rainbow Beach on the morning of January 2.  It was raining when I arrived in Maroochydore (“place of the black swans” in the original Aboriginal language) that afternoon.  It rained during my entire two-night stay in Maroochydore.  It was raining when I left there on January 4 for Brisbane, and it was raining in Brisbane when I arrived.  Crikey!  Do you see a pattern here, people? 

There’s nothing much to say about the beach town Maroochydore.  It’s reputed to have some great surf spots, but I wouldn’t know.  My reason for coming was because of the town’s proximity to the Australian Zoo.  I had my “zoo fix” in Singapore, but the Australian Zoo is unique because of its larger-than-life founder:  the late Steve Irwin.

I’m a huge fan of Steve Irwin, the “Crocodile Hunter,” and was deeply saddened by his untimely death in 2006.   Visiting the place he built served as an opportunity for me to pay homage to the man.  I was there on January 3.

His father had collected reptiles and ultimately left his job to pursue that love as a career.  He and Steve’s mother founded the Australian Zoo in 1970, but it was a mere fraction of its present size and stature then.  It was Steve, the middle child of three and only son, along with his wife Terri, who took over in 1992 and made it what it is today.  He wrestled his first crocodile at the age of nine.  He married Terri two months after spotting her in the audience at one of his animal shows.  He had said that he didn’t expect to live past his thirties in light of the many risks he took.

The zoo is relatively small and has only a moderate variety of animals on display.  But the employees show a passion for their work reminiscent of their former boss’s.  At different times during the day, they bring animals out into the open, among the visitors.  As a result, I got an up-close view of a wombat, a parrot, an owl, elephants and a koala.  I was able to pet one of the koalas, whose fur is soft but dry, like cotton.  Throughout the park, there’s an inescapable emphasis on animal conservation.  Steve Irwin’s view was that if an animal were to live in captivity, it would live a life of luxury.

Steve Irwin’s presence is ubiquitous.  His image is everywhere.  The gift shops sell small-scale plastic versions of him in different sizes.  On the courtesy bus into the park, a video monitor features episodes of his show.  On the giant screen in the arena called “The Crocoseum,” before the crocodile show begins, he can be seen and heard waxing on enthusiastically about the ferocious reptiles.

What passion he exhibits!  There are few individuals who exude such unquenchable zest for life.  Some of the others who come to mind are giant wave surfer Laird Hamilton, the William Wallace character played by Mel Gibson in “Braveheart,” an elder in my congregation named Bob.  These are among the few who really seem to have life by the proverbial horns.  Their admirable lives involve vision and risk and boldness and tenacity, qualities I’ll be the first to admit are too often missing from my life.  “All men die,” Braveheart said, “but not all men really live.”  Steve Irwin really lived.

I was thinking these thoughts while watching the Crocodile Hunter’s impassioned antics on the big Crocoseum screen when a surge of emotion hit and, unexpectedly, I began to cry.  Fortunately, it was raining, so I could remove my tears without drawing attention.  (And no one will ever know…except the dozens of you I’ve now “confided” in!)  But what a largely lived life was lost by his tragic death.  I would’ve loved to have followed his career for years to come.

Different members of the crocodile team put on the crocodile show, and there’s no telling who will perform at any given time.  But I was immensely fortunate to catch the show presented by Steve Irwin’s wife Terri herself and his original partner Wes, names that will be familiar to fans of the show.  It was a thrill seeing them up close and live.

After the show, underneath the Crocoseum bleachers, I found an unpublicized memorial to Steve Irwin.  It’s a long fence covered with collages and written-on zoo shirts and flags and flowers and Aboriginal art and toy animals and surfboards offered as a tribute to the man.  The gist of the messages from the fellow Australians can be summed up in the vastly understated, “Good on ya, mate!”

Last night, my first night in Brisbane, I caught a movie:  “Into the Wild.”  The film is based on the true story of a young man who dispossessed himself of all of his belongings after graduating from college and embarked on a sojourn alone into the wilds of Alaska.  As you might have guessed, I’m a sucker for this kind of theme.  But I highly recommend the film and give big props to the performance of the star, Emile Hirsh (whose role in “Lords of Dogtown” stole the movie).  The story challenges what can be a mindless adherence to the expectations of others and, it seems to me, what the ancient Greeks recognized long ago as “the unexamined life.”

For the record, the weather today, January 5, has been beautiful and sunny in Brisbane.  I spent the day wandering around the city, which is really gorgeous.  It reminds me of Melbourne, which is a high compliment indeed.  This weather is more common for the region.  In fact, water shortages and water quality have always been a big problem here.  Get this:  when the city was in its infancy, in the 1850s, no fewer than one in two children did not live beyond their fifth birthdays because of impure water.

I’ll be here only until tomorrow, when I move on to my sixth and final Australian state–New South Wales, a state with a name abundant in adjectives.  There I’ll be meeting up with a couple friends from home–Kerry and Phil–who themselves are susceptible to description by an abundance of adjectives.

Tags: Australia, Australia Zoo, Brisbane, Queensland, Steve Irwin, Travel

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