The Saltie Sunbath

08 july 2002
Steve Irwin Stephen Robert Irwin was born to Lyn and Bob Irwin in Victoria in February 1962. Bob Irwin was a keen enthusiast of reptiles and moved his family to Queensland in 1970 to start a small reptile park at Beerwah on the Sunshine Coast. Australia Zoo opened its doors to the public in April 1973 and became a true family business, flourishing until 1991 when Bob & Lyn retired, turning over management to their son, Steve.
Living in the Park, Steve grew up with animals of all kinds, taking part in the inhabitants daily feeding, care and maintenance. His 6th birthday present was what he had always wanted – his very own scrub python! It was 3.6m long and while most other children were opening cans of pet food for their cats or dogs, Steve was out catching fish and hunting rodents to feed to his crocodiles and snakes.
Bob taught the young Steve everything there was to know about reptiles – even teaching his nine-year-old how to jump in and catch crocodiles in the rivers of North Queensland at night. This father and son’s proud boast is that every crocodile in their park (now numbering some 100 animals) was either caught by their bare hands or bred and raised in their Park.
As he grew older Steve followed in his father’s footsteps and volunteered his services to the Queensland Governments rogue crocodile relocation program which saw him spend years living on his own in the mosquito infested creeks, rivers and mangroves of North Queensland catching huge troublesome crocodiles single-handed. His record of successful catches is still staggering to this day.
Since 1991, Australia Zoo has flourished and expanded under Steve’s guidance. In 1990 a chance reunion with his friend, television producer John Stainton, filming in the Park for a TV commercial, gave Steve the opportunity to show his diverse animal talents to the world when they both took a punt and make the first documentary, "The Crocodile Hunter" in 1992. The tremendous success of this one program quickly encouraged the making of more and so over the next 3 years, 10 one hour episodes were made and on television screens all over the world. Steve has now filmed over 50 episodes of "Crocodile Hunter", 52 episodes of "Croc Files", and his next project will be an animated series.
Steve has the greatest respect and understanding for all animals – something that has been instilled into him by his family for all of his life – and he's proud to share his passion with everyone who visits his Zoo and with his five hundred million viewers world-wide.
In June 1992, Steve married Terri Raines from Oregon USA. They had met a few months earlier when Terri visited the Park whilst on holidays in Australia. They now spend their lives together educating people everywhere to care for all of our world’s wildlife.

*taken from: http://www.crocodilehunter.com