Paul Thomas: Cult of Irwin is more about branding than breeding

Paul Thomas

In celebrity culture, death really can be the ultimate career move.

Not death in the everyday sense - old timers conking out in their beds or succumbing to the usual suspects in hospital wards. Death as a career move must be distinctive and, above all, untimely.

Premature death confers an aura of martyrdom, as well as ensuring that the fallen star is preserved in his or her glamorous prime, like an insect in amber. The deceased swiftly attains iconic status. A cult is formed, not so much to ensure that the dead star isn't forgotten, but to create and maintain the illusion that he or she never really died in the first place.

I recently encountered this phenomenon at Beerwah, an hour north of Brisbane. Australia Zoo isn't just a zoo; it's also a shrine to Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, whose death by a stingray in 2006 was described as a one in a million occurrence. You can't get much more distinctive than that.

Irwin made his name by turning conservation into a contact sport. Shoe-horned into a pair of khaki shorts at least one size too small and emoting like Marcel Marceau on party pills, he seemed to view the great outdoors as one big wrestling arena.

Not everyone found his manic enthusiasm infectious.

As his equally celebrated compatriot Germaine Greer wrote in a waspish post-mortem piece: "There was no habitat, no matter how fragile or finely balanced, that Irwin hesitated to barge into, trumpeting his wonder and amazement to the skies."

At Australia Zoo you can't hide from the Crocodile Hunter. Re-runs of his TV show appear on a giant screen and at every turn you're greeted with his image and bombarded with his catch-cries. Fortunately the vibe is determinedly upbeat, otherwise the combination of Irwin iconography and khaki-uniformed staff could have you thinking you've wandered into the People's Republic of Reptilia presided over by the Great Helmsman Chairman Stevo.

Punters flock to the Crocoseum to watch a crocodile being fed Irwin-style, which involves equal measures of provocation and risk. But before we get to see whether the Irwin clone loses the seat of his shorts or perhaps a hand, we're treated to a cheesy warm-up and a conservation pep-talk in which Stevo's name is repeatedly invoked.

A "Crikey-Off", which involves spectators on one side of the Crocoseum trying to bellow "Crikey!" louder than those on the other, proves to be the first of several anti-climaxes. The second comes in the form of the Crocmen, a trio of bland young men who perform environmentally friendly pop songs and exchange dire banter in the manner of children's TV show hosts.

Their job is to warm up the kiddies for the real star of the show, Irwin's daughter Bindi. As Bindi and the Crocmen run through their repertoire under the approving gaze of mother Terri and little brother Robert, a Stevo mini-me right down to the khaki shorts, it becomes clear that in addition to being a money-maker and a shrine, Australia Zoo is also the launch pad for an Irwin dynasty.

What better way to set Bindi on the road to stardom and put a lock on that corner of the market where show business meets environmentalism than have her perform for a captive audience, if one can use that term when discussing a zoo?

Although more than comfortable in the spotlight, Bindi evinces no greater talent for singing and dancing than any other 10-year-old girl bitten by the performance bug. By the time the show reaches its inevitable anti-climax - Bindi serenading a pony, to that point the only live animal we've seen since entering the zoo - one is consumed with the sort of smouldering resentment that accompanies compulsory viewings of home videos of other people's children doing unremarkable things at inordinate length.

While this might read like a postcard from a curmudgeon, I can advise that mine was not a dissenting view among our party of 12 spanning three generations. Indeed the younger generation was, if anything, even more resentful than the oldies who know from bitter experience that tourist attractions promising fun for all the family are usually guilty of false advertising.

None of which alters the fact that Australia Zoo is a superb facility, even if the highlight - the tiger show - features a species not normally associated with the Wide Brown Land. Perhaps tigers are about to be given the Phar Lap treatment.

It would be even better if the Irwins bore in mind that we see humans preening and performing every day. We go to zoos to admire the wild life.