The croc-savvy kid
[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]It's two months since the death of her father, Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin, but already Bindi is filling his shoes as Australia's favourite TV star. Can this really be a healthy role for an eight-year-old? Patrick Barkham reports[/font]
'This is Humphrey. He's a bison," chirps the diminutive figure in a canary-coloured polo shirt. "Did you know bison can weigh up to a tonne?" It is five weeks after the Australian naturalist and international TV star Steve Irwin was killed by the barb of a stingray and his eight-year-old daughter, Bindi, is already back at work. A 26-part American TV series must be completed and so, on a blustery day in Queensland, Australia, the little girl with two bunches bouncing down her back trots into a pen and introduces Humphrey to the cameras.
Faced with a sudden bereavement, few would seek succour from an eight-year-old. But that is exactly what many Australians did, convulsed in a period of public grief over the Crocodile Hunter that many said matched the British upset over the death of Princess Diana. Children burst into tears at school. The prime minister, John Howard, choked up live on TV. Hillocks of flowers materialised outside Irwin's Australia Zoo in Beerwah, Queensland. And Bindi, as grief-stricken as any daughter who had suddenly lost her dad, was called upon to fill a Steve Irwin-sized hole - role model, heiress to her dad's dynasty and cheerleader-in-grief for millions.
Thrust centre-stage at Irwin's memorial service, where she read a tribute to her dad that moved millions to tears, Bindi's face now peers from dozens of magazines. Implored by 93% of readers of the leading women's weekly New Idea to follow in her father's footsteps, Bindi dutifully got to work, making a commercial to raise money for her father's Wildlife Warriors charity. Because Irwin had promised to attend the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards in Sydney, she fulfilled the commitment, taking to the flashbulb-flecked red carpet and answering shouted questions from the media. "It's kind of sad that he [Irwin] couldn't be here but it's nice that I can be here to do it," she said.
"Every expert in the world has been all over us," Irwin once said in an interview with Andrew Denton, Australia's equivalent to Parkinson. "And they meet Bindi and they're like, crikey, you know, she's the most well-rounded croc-savvy child on the face of the earth." As Denton pointed out, "There's not a big field of croc-savvy kids".
Bindi has led an extraordinary life. Her dad may have caught his first crocodile when he was nine, but he also attended the local high school and trained as a mechanic before finding fame relatively late in life, put in front of a camera by his manager, the film-maker John Stainton. In contrast, Bindi has been schooled at home when not following her dad filming around the world. Her schoolwork is published on
the Crocodile Hunter website for fans and she performs in her own band, Bindi and the Crocmen, for the crowds at the zoo. Her best friend at the zoo was Harriet, a 176-year-old tortoise thought to have travelled with Darwin, who died in June.
Despite the eccentricity of Bindi's upbringing, Stainton, Irwin's loyal best mate and the driving force behind Brand Irwin, says that she remains an ordinary little girl. "She loves dressing up in fairy outfits and playing with Barbie dolls and putting sparkly things on and doing all the things that little girls do. But she's also very special and she loves singing and dancing and wildlife. She wants to tell the world about her dad's work."
Many Australians are no longer so sure that is wise. When she stoically resumed filming her new show, Bindi the Jungle Girl, with Humphrey the bison but without her father, popular fascination turned to concern. "Poor Bindi: she's being set up to be another zoo exhibit," wrote one columnist. "The media, her mother and her minders have turned this child into a money-making machine," typed Sydney blogger John Holman.
Against a backdrop of anxiety over "toxic childhood", academics, psychologists and politicians have spoken out. "Every child has a right to their childhood, and every child should be given an unconditional guarantee of safe passage through their years of infancy," thundered Bill Heffernan, an influential Liberal party senator who has campaigned on child safety issues. "And I think there is a risk that this little Bindi will lose the opportunity for a normal childhood."
While a backlash against such a blameless young heroine would be impossible, with his dark shades, hyperbolic claims and obvious economic interest in keeping the Irwin dynasty going, Stainton has been the focus of criticism. Condemned for claiming that Bindi would become bigger than her father, he announced last week that his young charge's TV career was being put on hold for a year. After an uncharacteristic purdah, the garrulous Queenslander re-emerged this week with a new plan - no 12-month break for Bindi. "That was last week," he tells the Guardian. There is no schedule for filming Bindi the Jungle Girl yet, but "when everybody's ready to do it, we will start".
There remains a suspicion that a place in the public eye is not what is best for Bindi, but is instead what best suits Irwin's flourishing conservation-entertainment empire. Australia Zoo employs more than 500 people, a place of pilgrimage thanks to the Crocodile Hunter series, which reached 500 million people in more than 135 countries. Six years ago, Australia Zoo had 200,000 visitors; this year almost a million have passed through its gates. Now the dynasty needs a new face; Bindi is the anointed one.
How has Bindi been coping with the loss of her father? Is she being allowed to mourn? "Kids are different from adults. They don't cry every day for 24 hours. They get on with playing. They get on with life fairly quickly," Stainton reckons.
Psychologists, however, flinch at Stainton's bold statements, including his insistence in one newspaper that "Bindi's really lucky that she has a direction at the age of eight". Dr Bob Montgomery, of the Australian Psychological Society, describes it as "irresponsible" to suggest what her future career will be. "She needs support, helping her decide what that will be at the right time, which is not now."
Not all Australians think Bindi is being ex-ploitated. Her itinerant existence has been like the children of circus entertainers, according to Dr Karen Brooks, a senior lecturer in Australian and cultural studies at the University of the Sunshine Coast. She suggests that to halt Bindi's putative film career may create a double bereavement - losing her dad and denied the life that, for her, was normal. "She wasn't born with a silver spoon in her mouth; she was born with a microphone in her hand. It is what she's accustomed to. To snatch that away is to deprive her of something that, rightly or wrongly, gives her sustenance."
While Terri Irwin, Bindi's mother, has kept largely silent since her husband's death, Stainton insists that "Terri is in charge". "Most mums run the family and Terri has done an amazing job of raising these children [Bindi and her brother, Robert]. They're fabulous kids, very well-mannered; they love life, they are knowledgeable." Stainton may not dispel an impression that he is a maverick impresario, but Irwin's family have stuck up for him. Steve's father, Bob Irwin, told ABC that not only Bindi was "going to have a really, really big career" but that Stainton was the person he would like to guide her through it.
Stainton insists, however, that Bindi's future is not all mapped out. "She's a little kid and she will change her mind and she can. She might decide she'll be a famous singer or ballerina. She may decide to be a famous heart surgeon. I can't predict where she'll end up."
If Bindi has mixed feelings about returning to finish the TV series she started with her dad, so, too, does the Australian public, torn between wanting to celebrate an idealised young girl and keep her out of the media - and harm's way. Stainton has no such misgivings. "Steve had so much enthusiasm, energy and charisma that she's got a bucketload from him," he says. "I told Steve that she would eclipse him in popularity and he was more than happy for that to happen. Bindi's just got that X-factor ... Whatever she puts her talents to she'll be famous because she's got that X. Not many people have it".
