November 26, 2025 • 23 mins
We feel like we’ve known him since he was in nappies. But now, at 21, the fame enjoyed by Robert Irwin - the son of Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin - has been supercharged after winning one of America’s top reality television shows, Dancing with the Stars.
Today, culture editor-at-large Michael Idato on the Irwin family empire and how Robert Irwin’s brand of "nice" has won over America.
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S1 (00:02):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Sellinger Morris. We
feel like we've known him since he was in nappies.
But now, at 21, the fame enjoyed by Robert Irwin,
the son of crocodile hunter Steve Irwin, has been supercharged
(00:25):
after winning one of America's top reality television shows, dancing
With the stars. Today, culture editor at large Michael Idato
on the Irwin family empire and how Robert Irwin's brand
of nice has won over America. So, Michael, welcome to
(00:48):
the Morning Edition. Or should I say good evening? Because
of course, it's evening where you are in LA.
S2 (00:52):
It is so good evening and good morning. Wherever you are,
wherever you're listening.
S1 (00:57):
All the things. Okay, let's get into it. Can you
tell us a bit about Robert Irwin and why we're
talking about him now?
S2 (01:03):
Sir Robert Irwin is the son of Steve Irwin, the
Australian TV personality.
S3 (01:08):
G'day. I'm Steve Irwin.
S2 (01:11):
Environmentalist, conservationist, The crocodile Hunter, as he is popularly known.
S3 (01:15):
It doesn't get any tenser than this. Here's a huge
croc in a very confined space.
S2 (01:26):
This is a boy that we've grown up watching as
a nation. We shared with him the loss of his father.
S4 (01:33):
Queensland adventurer Steve Irwin, who won fans around the world
for his love of dangerous animals, has been killed in
a freak accident. The croc hunter was on the Great
Barrier Reef.
S2 (01:43):
And I think that triggers collectively a great sense of
I think we all feel a measure of shared custody
of of Steve's kids. We've watched them grow up, so
they have a very specific emotional kind of resonance with
the audience. In the United States, the family is incredibly
well known. We're talking about him because he has featured
(02:04):
in this season of the American Dancing with the stars,
the 34th season. He's performed incredibly well.
S5 (02:11):
Robert Irwin has got hearts racing again in his latest
dancing With the stars performance, earning his highest scores of
the season with a tantalizing tango.
S2 (02:20):
And around him, there has been this kind of cyclone
of marketing momentum noise discussion. People are tuning in.
S6 (02:27):
America has well and truly fallen in love with our
golden boy, Robert Irwin. This boy is in his element,
and I think the Americans have really seen that and
have just fallen in love with his positivity and just
absolute zest for life.
S2 (02:44):
The show is reporting basically kind of audience numbers that
it hasn't seen certainly in more than a decade, I
would say probably about 12 or 13 years since it's
seen kind of this scale of not just audience capture,
but also kind of, you know, media stickiness, the fact
that it's kind of on every website, it's leading morning
news broadcasts on Wednesday mornings here after the Tuesday Night
(03:07):
Live shows. So there's an incredible amount of energy around
it at the moment.
S1 (03:16):
Yeah, it's pretty amazing. He's actually a fantastic dancer for
someone who, as I understand it, had no dancing experience
prior to this. We'll get into that. But first, can
you just give us an idea about the scale of
the Irwin family empire? Like what does it consist of?
S2 (03:29):
So essentially the center of that empire is the Australia Zoo.
It's located in Brighton, Queensland. It's basically 700 acres. There's
about 500 staff. There's about a million, I think about
a million people a year go through the turnstiles. So
it's a kind of it's a private zoo in, you know, in,
in the sense of being a straight business. But the
(03:50):
Irwin's are as a family, they have a really big, um,
they have a large amount of conservation land holdings. So
for example, they have a there's a Steve Irwin Reserve,
which is in Cape York. There's, uh, conservation properties elsewhere
in Queensland. Essentially, I think all up they basically have
about half a million acres of what amount to private
national parks. They are kind of they are conserved wildlife areas.
(04:13):
So they are environmentalists in an enterprise sense. They have, um,
a really, really big kind of TV business. They have
a deal with Warner Brothers in America for content for
the Animal Planet show. They have big social profiles. Those
profiles obviously get monetized with products. And they essentially out
of all of that, they spin a licensing business, which
(04:36):
is essentially, you know, the phrase is the crocodile Hunter
and Australia Zoo. Steve Irwin, the Irwin family, there are products.
There are, you know, everything from sort of, I guess,
like Funko dolls to, you know, sort of t shirts
or kind of, you know, merchandise. There's a big kind
of business enterprise that sort of spins out of it all.
(04:57):
But I think the centrepiece centerpiece of that business is
the zoo.
S1 (05:00):
Okay. In. Australians, of course, have been familiar with Robert
virtually since the day he was born. We all remember
his father, Steve, sort of holding him in his arms.
I think he was wearing nappies, you know, while his
father was feeding crocodiles. But now Americans have fallen in
love with Robert. So what is it about him that
they're sort of latching on to?
S2 (05:19):
Certainly the heart of particularly for Australians, the heart of
that brand is about the fact that we grew up
watching him. We all feel a tremendous emotional connection to
his loss and to kind of the family's triumph against
that loss in lots of ways to Americans. He sort
of springs out of that story, the Steve Irwin story.
And when Steve Irwin died, it was a gigantic news
(05:40):
event here. I think what's so powerful about what's happening
in 2025 is that Robert Irwin kind of lands in
this moment as a really, really upbeat story and an
incredibly downbeat news cycle. Everything we have. There's a hundred
channels of misery available to you. Pick a news channel
anywhere and you'll be really unhappy. Just kind of trying
(06:03):
to consume it all. And what Robert Irwin is, he's
a feel good story. And him personally, I know that's
a really hard thing to do. I don't know him.
I've met him peripherally. I'm very good friends with Julia Morris,
who is his co-host on I'm a celebrity. He's a
nice guy. Nobody on Earth seems to have a bad
word to say. Everyone who knows him says 100% of
(06:23):
what you see on the camera is 100% of him.
So there's no artifice, there's no pretense, there's nothing. There's
no false kind of motive in him. He's just a
really wonderfully genuine young man doing incredibly well. And there's
there's also that thing I think that, you know, success
smells really good. We're all drawn to the smell of it.
The fact that he's not just a really lovely guy,
(06:45):
but he's scoring perfect 30 because in Dancing With the stars,
three judges each have paddles to score. You know, up
to ten points for performance. And when you get three tens,
that's all you can get. That's the perfect score for
Dancing With the stars. And he's scoring 30s. So this
boy is kind of conquered the game. He's conquered the dance,
he's conquered the audience. I just feel like we're kind
(07:07):
of we're kind of all there emotionally.
S1 (07:10):
And do you think that Dancing With the Stars is,
I don't know, perhaps a perfect vehicle to sort of channel,
I guess, his authenticity or this story, even about his
loss and how he has sort of lived through that,
because you wrote really movingly about a moment on Dancing
with the stars with his mom, Terry, that probably would
have won even cynics over. So perhaps tell us about
(07:32):
that moment.
S2 (07:33):
So essentially, they were there's a week in the competition
they called Dedication Week, where all the choices are made
and kind of dedicated to an idea or to someone
or to something. He dedicated the performance to his mother.
S7 (07:45):
Dancing contemporary with his partner, Witney Carson. It's Robert Irwin.
S2 (07:51):
They performed a contemporary dance. It was all very beautiful.
It had lots of shadow. And there's, of course, this
incredibly beautiful moment at the end where he sort of
spins Whitney, his dance partner, into the shadow, and as
she spins out of the shadow, the camera's traveling around
him and they've they've done this incredible camera switcheroo, basically
to put Terri Irwin, his mother, into the dance. He
(08:13):
obviously just can't even deal with it. And it sort
of breaks down in tears in that moment. So there's
there's a huge amount of human emotion there.
S8 (08:21):
This dance is for my mum. It's for all of
the mums out there who don't get the recognition they deserve.
This is for the single parents who work so hard
every day to put one foot in front of the other.
It's for anyone who's lost. Someone who feels lost. Keep going.
S2 (08:38):
There's two key things I think going on. One of
them is it's obviously very deliberate. It's a very specific act.
That moment is scripted and produced and everyone in it
is a participant. So even Robert and Terri themselves know
they're kind of emotionally putting their emotions as a product
into a moment and knowing that television will gobble that
(08:59):
up in a really crazy personal way. At the same time,
because I think I'm a great believer in life, that
when people are struggling to find answers, the answer is
often all things can simultaneously be true at the same time.
It's an incredibly genuine moment. There's no false motive. It
really is him dedicating the song to his mother. It
really is her willing to kind of share a moment
(09:21):
with him on that show. His sister won the show
ten years ago, so the family has a bit of weird, emotional,
kind of, you know, skin in the game as well,
collectively and the moments incredibly beautiful. It's really hard not
to be affected by it.
S8 (09:37):
And I'm so grateful. I never thought that this would
be the place, that this would be the avenue that
I finally get to fully express my gratitude. To the
to the person who shaped me into who I am today.
And I'm so grateful for that. Thank you.
S2 (09:55):
The inescapable truth of Robert Owen is that he is
a boy, that we as a nation. We grieved with
him when he lost his father, and we've all kept
a national maternalistic paternalistic eye on him ever since, basically
just checking that he's okay and wanting the best for him.
Because as a young man and as a family, they
(10:17):
suffered such incredible public loss that it's hard not to
be drawn into the the real power of that.
S1 (10:24):
Perhaps that's why I'm going to quote from your story here.
You wrote Even Love Island hardened TV critics were left
sobbing and clutching their Kleenex boxes. Is that you, Michael Adato?
S2 (10:34):
It was me, I was it's really it's such an
emotional moment. I mean, I lost my mother in 2019,
and I think that I don't think you need to
have experienced losing your mother to understand that moment, but
it certainly helps. It gives. There's a I think, for
me and for anyone who has felt very personal loss,
there's an easy window to step through in that moment
(10:56):
to understand the power of it. Because here's the thing.
You know, Steve Irwin died at a point in the
lives of those children. Terri Irwin was a single mum.
Those kids were really raised by her, and they were
raised into the memory of their father, and they were
raised in an environment that was dedicated to their father. But,
you know, it's I don't know how anybody could fail
(11:19):
to give her the extraordinary credit of not just building
a business around them and around his legacy. It's a
story of her hardship and all the sacrifices she made
as a mother, to make sure the kids were okay.
And it's a story of, you know, the kids in
this wild and very beautiful dedication they have to their dad.
S1 (11:41):
We'll be right.
S9 (11:42):
Back.
S1 (11:50):
Can you track Robert Irwin's rise for us? Like, where
did it start? Was it the bonds add because I
know that many listeners, I imagine they might be like
myself that you know. Of course. Yeah. For a long time,
you know, we had this fixed idea of Robert as
a toddler, you know, hanging out with his dad, and
then boom, there he is with his six pack. Like,
I want to know whose idea that that was.
S2 (12:11):
I mean, look, I think obviously he was, um, always
well known in the sense that the family was famous.
There probably are some sort of headline touchstones over the years.
There's no question. The bonds campaign, particularly for America, not
only kind of put him into the middle of the
media ecosystem here, but also taps into the fact that
he's a very good looking young man. And, you know,
(12:32):
the media ecosystem everywhere really loves very good looking young
people of all ages, you know, of all ages and
kind of designs. So he he steps into that frame,
you know, with kind of matinee idol, you know, movie looks.
And the camera loves him. The media love him. He
has all of that natural charm. And I think that's
(12:53):
where it all starts to ignite. The most interesting thing
to me, not just the bonds campaign, but I think
also whoever had the idea to put him on Dancing
With the Stars, obviously, I think because it was the 10th,
I think it's the 10th anniversary of Bindi's win. Someone
at the American ABC network has obviously consciously thought, oh,
here's a connection. You know, ten years later, let's approach
her brother. He's obviously everywhere right now in this, this
(13:14):
kind of American media campaign. Maybe, you know, maybe he'll
be into this. And I think also there's a very
clear focus from the enterprise itself, which is Australia Zoo
and the marketing machinery that goes around it to to
market him into America. He was just on the cover
of the New York Times Magazine. He's in people magazine
a lot. There's he has a strong American media presence. Um,
(13:38):
and obviously the connection through the Earthshot Prize to Prince William.
There's a, you know, there's a couple of things. There's
a couple of kind of touchstones here that have basically
served to amplify his brand at a time where I
think we will now see dancing with the stars amplify
the brand, um, at a to a much, much more
heightened level.
S1 (13:57):
And do you think his rise you know, from toddler
sort of obsessed with crocodiles to to budding heartthrob like
was this deliberate, I guess, you know, or even inevitable
a next step for him because we know that he's
literally been in the spotlight since the day he was born.
I was just reading today that a camera crew filmed
him as a newborn in the delivery room.
S2 (14:16):
Yeah, I mean, look, it's an interesting question. I mean,
obviously all of this is deliberate. No one, you know,
does a bonds commercial accidentally. No one falls out a
window and lands on Dancing with the stars. All of
this is by design, so I think it would be,
you know, it would be false to suggest that it's
the sort of that it's all happened unexpectedly. Of course,
this is all. This is all incredibly by design. Um,
(14:38):
the key thing, and this is a bit random, but
I happen to be very good friends with Lorna Luft,
who is Judy Garland's daughter, um, in LA. And one
thing that I remember talking to her about was when
I asked her about growing up in that family and
in that kind of spotlight. She sort of was like
her answer was always. It was all very normal to me.
Like I didn't know any different. So I think the
(15:00):
key thing that question of did, let's say, did Robert
Irwin have a normal childhood? The answer is, what's a
normal childhood? I mean, a normal childhood is whatever you
have with your mother, your father and your siblings. And
in that sense, I think Robert Irwin had a really
normal childhood. I just think he had it in the
shadow of his father's loss. But in the family zoo,
(15:21):
with his mother and his sister surrounded by wildlife. And
that to a boy in that situation is a really
normal childhood.
S1 (15:30):
Okay, but let's get into why Robert and Bindi spend
so much time courting America. I mean, is it just
is it just a sort of amplify the business, or
is it something else?
S2 (15:39):
Well, it is, of course it is. I mean, it's
America is the heart of the business. It's the heart
of the television business. It's the heart of the global
pop culture ecosystem. It's where the money is big. And
also to be fair as well. If again, if we
go back to what the sense of the Irwins and
Steve Irwin was, you know, 25 or 30 years ago
(16:00):
in Australia, they were almost an American thing anyway. My
sense as a TV, I was a very young TV
writer at the time. I was in my 20s. I
was working for the Daily Telegraph. Um, I wrote about
Steve Irwin. I met him a bunch of times. He
was the world's nicest man. Terry was very lovely. I
think what my sense of it then was in America,
(16:20):
they had this big TV life. They were on Animal Planet.
There was sort of there was this. They were documentaries
and TV shows and all of this stuff. Australia never
had it at that volume. At that time, we didn't
even have pay television. It was still in its infancy
in the 1990s, the idea of cable TV. So what
we had was periodically channel ten would air one of
(16:43):
the documentaries as a special. So we might have only
had Steve Irwin on the TV, you know, on channel
ten in the 90s, 3 or 4 Times a year.
That was it. He was still a well known kind
of media personality, but the TV imprint was very small.
The American TV imprint was gigantic from the beginning. So
to some extent, the reason I think they focus on
(17:04):
America is that's where the big business is. It's where
the big money is that there's a whole lot of things,
but it is also where their father found his biggest fame,
and it's where their name is kind of universally known.
And it's where, as an Australian in America, if I
meet Americans on the street and we talk about stuff
or they ask about Australia, they were often I remember
being asked, what, oh, is Steve Irwin really famous in Australia?
(17:27):
And I'd have to sort of explain going, well, he is,
but probably not quite in the same way that you
guys go completely bananas for him.
S1 (17:34):
It's very interesting. And of course, the mother, Terry, of course,
is American. But but about Australia, you know, Robert was
the face of a big Tourism Australia campaign before Dancing
With the Stars. And he was just this week plugging
Australia Zoo on his social media. So is there some
kind of net benefit for us, like is this going
to benefit the Australian economy somehow?
S2 (17:54):
Of course. Gigantically I think there. Well, I mean, I
think that they're connected. So it's almost like tourism generally
and tourism specifically in the end. Um, lots of Americans
come to Australia wanting to go to Australia Zoo. It's
a as an entity, you know, growing up in Sydney,
I grew up knowing the Taronga Zoo. It's the only
zoo I kind of knew as a zoo. To Americans,
(18:14):
Australia Zoo is a much bigger, more centrally understood place,
and they often come to Australia wanting to go there,
and they do in large numbers. So um, and obviously because,
you know, the air traffic from the United States to
far north Queensland is not direct. There is a flow
on benefit really for everybody, because essentially many of those
(18:36):
tourists will come through the eastern capitals from America to
get to the Australia Zoo. So there is a kind
of collective benefit. There's a very specific benefit to the
family's enterprise. And again, this is again is this stuff
is very careful and deliberate. Absolutely. He knows what he's
doing on his socials, and absolutely he understands how all
the touch points land to market the zoo and the
(18:58):
idea of coming there. But collectively, as a country, it's
a very positive brand to represent us. And I think also, um,
there is a logical follow on where, you know, those
tourist dollars in order to get to to that location,
you pretty much have to flow through, you know, the
eastern capital cities of Australia to get there.
S1 (19:18):
Okay. And, Michael, just to wrap up on that note
of positivity, your piece about Robert Irwin, it is resoundingly positive.
I mean, this is the vibe that surrounds him, right? Like,
I was doing a little bit of a deep dive
and I saw that the New York Times, the headline
on their feature from about a week ago was Robert
Irwin is actually that nice? I mean, that's that's just
what he is, right? But I this might be the
(19:39):
Australian tall poppy syndrome sort of peeking through. But I
just want to ask you, is there a chance the
public might overdose on his sort of like, unrelenting, uh,
positivity and upbeat ness? Bitterness. And this could just be
me projecting my feelings of inadequacy that perhaps I'm not
as nice as Robert Irwin is all the time.
S2 (19:57):
So, look, the answer is, I don't know. I doubt it.
I feel like nice is nice, and nice is a
really easy brand to sell. I will give you one
controversial thought. I'm not a big believer in the tall
poppy syndrome, because I think in order to fall prey
to it, you have to trigger it. And the to
my mind, the tall poppy syndrome only ever really got
(20:19):
thrown at people who went overseas or went somewhere and
somehow turned their back. Kylie Minogue could argue there was
a period where people had a go at her, but
it would also happen to be a period where, you
know what felt like seconds after leaving Australia, she suddenly
manifested a kind of transglobal British accent. And I think
(20:41):
when people perceive any sense of falsehood in those moments,
that's where they react angrily. And that's where the patrol
puppy syndrome occurs in Robert Irwin's case. I think it's
really hard for that to happen. Nice is nice and
I don't know how you argue with nice, and I
think that in a context where everything else is a
(21:01):
real like the emotional kind of palette of the moment
is frustration, depression, fear, anger, all these things are kind
of being pushed out into the wider culture, and we're
consuming them. And it frustrates us. And I think, you know,
there was a piece I wrote a couple of years
ago about Christmas where essentially I'd articulated an idea to
(21:21):
one of our editors who said, you need to capture that,
which was we got to the end of the year,
and there are just moments where you think it's just
a relief that we got here, like we it was
a success just getting here. And I think in contrast
to that, when Robert Irwin comes into the room and
he lights up the TV screen because he's lighting up
the room and he dances up a storm and he
gives you something to cheer for. And not only that,
(21:43):
you have even the cynical idea that all of this
is to make money for the Australia Zoo Yazoo somehow
through tourism and profile and celebrity. The answer the kind
of postscript to that becomes, that's true. And do you
know what they do with all that money? They actually
buy land and turn them into conserved wilderness, and conserved
(22:04):
wilderness costs money to conserve and protect, and it's not
revenue generating. So there's a sort of the story. And
in the Steve Irwin story, as much as the Robert
and Terri and Bindi Irwin story, there's an extraordinary nobility
at the heart of the commerce, which is, yeah, this
is a business. And yeah, it makes money. But look
what they do with this money. And look what this
(22:25):
conservation foundation has done to preserve Australian wilderness. I don't
know how people argue with that. I don't see any
negatives for the brand. And I think for him in America,
the experience of dancing with the stars will amplify that
substantially and in ways that we're probably still yet to see.
S1 (22:44):
Wow, Michael, thank you so much for your time.
S2 (22:48):
My pleasure. Always a pleasure.
S1 (23:02):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by myself
and Kai Wong. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Our
head of audio is Tom McKendrick. The Morning Edition is
a production of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
If you enjoy the show and want more of our journalism,
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(23:29):
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the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris. This is the
morning edition. Thanks for listening.
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Sellinger Morris. We
feel like we've known him since he was in nappies.
But now, at 21, the fame enjoyed by Robert Irwin,
the son of crocodile hunter Steve Irwin, has been supercharged
(00:25):
after winning one of America's top reality television shows, dancing
With the stars. Today, culture editor at large Michael Idato
on the Irwin family empire and how Robert Irwin's brand
of nice has won over America. So, Michael, welcome to
(00:48):
the Morning Edition. Or should I say good evening? Because
of course, it's evening where you are in LA.
S2 (00:52):
It is so good evening and good morning. Wherever you are,
wherever you're listening.
S1 (00:57):
All the things. Okay, let's get into it. Can you
tell us a bit about Robert Irwin and why we're
talking about him now?
S2 (01:03):
Sir Robert Irwin is the son of Steve Irwin, the
Australian TV personality.
S3 (01:08):
G'day. I'm Steve Irwin.
S2 (01:11):
Environmentalist, conservationist, The crocodile Hunter, as he is popularly known.
S3 (01:15):
It doesn't get any tenser than this. Here's a huge
croc in a very confined space.
S2 (01:26):
This is a boy that we've grown up watching as
a nation. We shared with him the loss of his father.
S4 (01:33):
Queensland adventurer Steve Irwin, who won fans around the world
for his love of dangerous animals, has been killed in
a freak accident. The croc hunter was on the Great
Barrier Reef.
S2 (01:43):
And I think that triggers collectively a great sense of
I think we all feel a measure of shared custody
of of Steve's kids. We've watched them grow up, so
they have a very specific emotional kind of resonance with
the audience. In the United States, the family is incredibly
well known. We're talking about him because he has featured
(02:04):
in this season of the American Dancing with the stars,
the 34th season. He's performed incredibly well.
S5 (02:11):
Robert Irwin has got hearts racing again in his latest
dancing With the stars performance, earning his highest scores of
the season with a tantalizing tango.
S2 (02:20):
And around him, there has been this kind of cyclone
of marketing momentum noise discussion. People are tuning in.
S6 (02:27):
America has well and truly fallen in love with our
golden boy, Robert Irwin. This boy is in his element,
and I think the Americans have really seen that and
have just fallen in love with his positivity and just
absolute zest for life.
S2 (02:44):
The show is reporting basically kind of audience numbers that
it hasn't seen certainly in more than a decade, I
would say probably about 12 or 13 years since it's
seen kind of this scale of not just audience capture,
but also kind of, you know, media stickiness, the fact
that it's kind of on every website, it's leading morning
news broadcasts on Wednesday mornings here after the Tuesday Night
(03:07):
Live shows. So there's an incredible amount of energy around
it at the moment.
S1 (03:16):
Yeah, it's pretty amazing. He's actually a fantastic dancer for
someone who, as I understand it, had no dancing experience
prior to this. We'll get into that. But first, can
you just give us an idea about the scale of
the Irwin family empire? Like what does it consist of?
S2 (03:29):
So essentially the center of that empire is the Australia Zoo.
It's located in Brighton, Queensland. It's basically 700 acres. There's
about 500 staff. There's about a million, I think about
a million people a year go through the turnstiles. So
it's a kind of it's a private zoo in, you know, in,
in the sense of being a straight business. But the
(03:50):
Irwin's are as a family, they have a really big, um,
they have a large amount of conservation land holdings. So
for example, they have a there's a Steve Irwin Reserve,
which is in Cape York. There's, uh, conservation properties elsewhere
in Queensland. Essentially, I think all up they basically have
about half a million acres of what amount to private
national parks. They are kind of they are conserved wildlife areas.
(04:13):
So they are environmentalists in an enterprise sense. They have, um,
a really, really big kind of TV business. They have
a deal with Warner Brothers in America for content for
the Animal Planet show. They have big social profiles. Those
profiles obviously get monetized with products. And they essentially out
of all of that, they spin a licensing business, which
(04:36):
is essentially, you know, the phrase is the crocodile Hunter
and Australia Zoo. Steve Irwin, the Irwin family, there are products.
There are, you know, everything from sort of, I guess,
like Funko dolls to, you know, sort of t shirts
or kind of, you know, merchandise. There's a big kind
of business enterprise that sort of spins out of it all.
(04:57):
But I think the centrepiece centerpiece of that business is
the zoo.
S1 (05:00):
Okay. In. Australians, of course, have been familiar with Robert
virtually since the day he was born. We all remember
his father, Steve, sort of holding him in his arms.
I think he was wearing nappies, you know, while his
father was feeding crocodiles. But now Americans have fallen in
love with Robert. So what is it about him that
they're sort of latching on to?
S2 (05:19):
Certainly the heart of particularly for Australians, the heart of
that brand is about the fact that we grew up
watching him. We all feel a tremendous emotional connection to
his loss and to kind of the family's triumph against
that loss in lots of ways to Americans. He sort
of springs out of that story, the Steve Irwin story.
And when Steve Irwin died, it was a gigantic news
(05:40):
event here. I think what's so powerful about what's happening
in 2025 is that Robert Irwin kind of lands in
this moment as a really, really upbeat story and an
incredibly downbeat news cycle. Everything we have. There's a hundred
channels of misery available to you. Pick a news channel
anywhere and you'll be really unhappy. Just kind of trying
(06:03):
to consume it all. And what Robert Irwin is, he's
a feel good story. And him personally, I know that's
a really hard thing to do. I don't know him.
I've met him peripherally. I'm very good friends with Julia Morris,
who is his co-host on I'm a celebrity. He's a
nice guy. Nobody on Earth seems to have a bad
word to say. Everyone who knows him says 100% of
(06:23):
what you see on the camera is 100% of him.
So there's no artifice, there's no pretense, there's nothing. There's
no false kind of motive in him. He's just a
really wonderfully genuine young man doing incredibly well. And there's
there's also that thing I think that, you know, success
smells really good. We're all drawn to the smell of it.
The fact that he's not just a really lovely guy,
(06:45):
but he's scoring perfect 30 because in Dancing With the stars,
three judges each have paddles to score. You know, up
to ten points for performance. And when you get three tens,
that's all you can get. That's the perfect score for
Dancing With the stars. And he's scoring 30s. So this
boy is kind of conquered the game. He's conquered the dance,
he's conquered the audience. I just feel like we're kind
(07:07):
of we're kind of all there emotionally.
S1 (07:10):
And do you think that Dancing With the Stars is,
I don't know, perhaps a perfect vehicle to sort of channel,
I guess, his authenticity or this story, even about his
loss and how he has sort of lived through that,
because you wrote really movingly about a moment on Dancing
with the stars with his mom, Terry, that probably would
have won even cynics over. So perhaps tell us about
(07:32):
that moment.
S2 (07:33):
So essentially, they were there's a week in the competition
they called Dedication Week, where all the choices are made
and kind of dedicated to an idea or to someone
or to something. He dedicated the performance to his mother.
S7 (07:45):
Dancing contemporary with his partner, Witney Carson. It's Robert Irwin.
S2 (07:51):
They performed a contemporary dance. It was all very beautiful.
It had lots of shadow. And there's, of course, this
incredibly beautiful moment at the end where he sort of
spins Whitney, his dance partner, into the shadow, and as
she spins out of the shadow, the camera's traveling around
him and they've they've done this incredible camera switcheroo, basically
to put Terri Irwin, his mother, into the dance. He
(08:13):
obviously just can't even deal with it. And it sort
of breaks down in tears in that moment. So there's
there's a huge amount of human emotion there.
S8 (08:21):
This dance is for my mum. It's for all of
the mums out there who don't get the recognition they deserve.
This is for the single parents who work so hard
every day to put one foot in front of the other.
It's for anyone who's lost. Someone who feels lost. Keep going.
S2 (08:38):
There's two key things I think going on. One of
them is it's obviously very deliberate. It's a very specific act.
That moment is scripted and produced and everyone in it
is a participant. So even Robert and Terri themselves know
they're kind of emotionally putting their emotions as a product
into a moment and knowing that television will gobble that
(08:59):
up in a really crazy personal way. At the same time,
because I think I'm a great believer in life, that
when people are struggling to find answers, the answer is
often all things can simultaneously be true at the same time.
It's an incredibly genuine moment. There's no false motive. It
really is him dedicating the song to his mother. It
really is her willing to kind of share a moment
(09:21):
with him on that show. His sister won the show
ten years ago, so the family has a bit of weird, emotional,
kind of, you know, skin in the game as well,
collectively and the moments incredibly beautiful. It's really hard not
to be affected by it.
S8 (09:37):
And I'm so grateful. I never thought that this would
be the place, that this would be the avenue that
I finally get to fully express my gratitude. To the
to the person who shaped me into who I am today.
And I'm so grateful for that. Thank you.
S2 (09:55):
The inescapable truth of Robert Owen is that he is
a boy, that we as a nation. We grieved with
him when he lost his father, and we've all kept
a national maternalistic paternalistic eye on him ever since, basically
just checking that he's okay and wanting the best for him.
Because as a young man and as a family, they
(10:17):
suffered such incredible public loss that it's hard not to
be drawn into the the real power of that.
S1 (10:24):
Perhaps that's why I'm going to quote from your story here.
You wrote Even Love Island hardened TV critics were left
sobbing and clutching their Kleenex boxes. Is that you, Michael Adato?
S2 (10:34):
It was me, I was it's really it's such an
emotional moment. I mean, I lost my mother in 2019,
and I think that I don't think you need to
have experienced losing your mother to understand that moment, but
it certainly helps. It gives. There's a I think, for
me and for anyone who has felt very personal loss,
there's an easy window to step through in that moment
(10:56):
to understand the power of it. Because here's the thing.
You know, Steve Irwin died at a point in the
lives of those children. Terri Irwin was a single mum.
Those kids were really raised by her, and they were
raised into the memory of their father, and they were
raised in an environment that was dedicated to their father. But,
you know, it's I don't know how anybody could fail
(11:19):
to give her the extraordinary credit of not just building
a business around them and around his legacy. It's a
story of her hardship and all the sacrifices she made
as a mother, to make sure the kids were okay.
And it's a story of, you know, the kids in
this wild and very beautiful dedication they have to their dad.
S1 (11:41):
We'll be right.
S9 (11:42):
Back.
S1 (11:50):
Can you track Robert Irwin's rise for us? Like, where
did it start? Was it the bonds add because I
know that many listeners, I imagine they might be like
myself that you know. Of course. Yeah. For a long time,
you know, we had this fixed idea of Robert as
a toddler, you know, hanging out with his dad, and
then boom, there he is with his six pack. Like,
I want to know whose idea that that was.
S2 (12:11):
I mean, look, I think obviously he was, um, always
well known in the sense that the family was famous.
There probably are some sort of headline touchstones over the years.
There's no question. The bonds campaign, particularly for America, not
only kind of put him into the middle of the
media ecosystem here, but also taps into the fact that
he's a very good looking young man. And, you know,
(12:32):
the media ecosystem everywhere really loves very good looking young
people of all ages, you know, of all ages and
kind of designs. So he he steps into that frame,
you know, with kind of matinee idol, you know, movie looks.
And the camera loves him. The media love him. He
has all of that natural charm. And I think that's
(12:53):
where it all starts to ignite. The most interesting thing
to me, not just the bonds campaign, but I think
also whoever had the idea to put him on Dancing
With the Stars, obviously, I think because it was the 10th,
I think it's the 10th anniversary of Bindi's win. Someone
at the American ABC network has obviously consciously thought, oh,
here's a connection. You know, ten years later, let's approach
her brother. He's obviously everywhere right now in this, this
(13:14):
kind of American media campaign. Maybe, you know, maybe he'll
be into this. And I think also there's a very
clear focus from the enterprise itself, which is Australia Zoo
and the marketing machinery that goes around it to to
market him into America. He was just on the cover
of the New York Times Magazine. He's in people magazine
a lot. There's he has a strong American media presence. Um,
(13:38):
and obviously the connection through the Earthshot Prize to Prince William.
There's a, you know, there's a couple of things. There's
a couple of kind of touchstones here that have basically
served to amplify his brand at a time where I
think we will now see dancing with the stars amplify
the brand, um, at a to a much, much more
heightened level.
S1 (13:57):
And do you think his rise you know, from toddler
sort of obsessed with crocodiles to to budding heartthrob like
was this deliberate, I guess, you know, or even inevitable
a next step for him because we know that he's
literally been in the spotlight since the day he was born.
I was just reading today that a camera crew filmed
him as a newborn in the delivery room.
S2 (14:16):
Yeah, I mean, look, it's an interesting question. I mean,
obviously all of this is deliberate. No one, you know,
does a bonds commercial accidentally. No one falls out a
window and lands on Dancing with the stars. All of
this is by design, so I think it would be,
you know, it would be false to suggest that it's
the sort of that it's all happened unexpectedly. Of course,
this is all. This is all incredibly by design. Um,
(14:38):
the key thing, and this is a bit random, but
I happen to be very good friends with Lorna Luft,
who is Judy Garland's daughter, um, in LA. And one
thing that I remember talking to her about was when
I asked her about growing up in that family and
in that kind of spotlight. She sort of was like
her answer was always. It was all very normal to me.
Like I didn't know any different. So I think the
(15:00):
key thing that question of did, let's say, did Robert
Irwin have a normal childhood? The answer is, what's a
normal childhood? I mean, a normal childhood is whatever you
have with your mother, your father and your siblings. And
in that sense, I think Robert Irwin had a really
normal childhood. I just think he had it in the
shadow of his father's loss. But in the family zoo,
(15:21):
with his mother and his sister surrounded by wildlife. And
that to a boy in that situation is a really
normal childhood.
S1 (15:30):
Okay, but let's get into why Robert and Bindi spend
so much time courting America. I mean, is it just
is it just a sort of amplify the business, or
is it something else?
S2 (15:39):
Well, it is, of course it is. I mean, it's
America is the heart of the business. It's the heart
of the television business. It's the heart of the global
pop culture ecosystem. It's where the money is big. And
also to be fair as well. If again, if we
go back to what the sense of the Irwins and
Steve Irwin was, you know, 25 or 30 years ago
(16:00):
in Australia, they were almost an American thing anyway. My
sense as a TV, I was a very young TV
writer at the time. I was in my 20s. I
was working for the Daily Telegraph. Um, I wrote about
Steve Irwin. I met him a bunch of times. He
was the world's nicest man. Terry was very lovely. I
think what my sense of it then was in America,
(16:20):
they had this big TV life. They were on Animal Planet.
There was sort of there was this. They were documentaries
and TV shows and all of this stuff. Australia never
had it at that volume. At that time, we didn't
even have pay television. It was still in its infancy
in the 1990s, the idea of cable TV. So what
we had was periodically channel ten would air one of
(16:43):
the documentaries as a special. So we might have only
had Steve Irwin on the TV, you know, on channel
ten in the 90s, 3 or 4 Times a year.
That was it. He was still a well known kind
of media personality, but the TV imprint was very small.
The American TV imprint was gigantic from the beginning. So
to some extent, the reason I think they focus on
(17:04):
America is that's where the big business is. It's where
the big money is that there's a whole lot of things,
but it is also where their father found his biggest fame,
and it's where their name is kind of universally known.
And it's where, as an Australian in America, if I
meet Americans on the street and we talk about stuff
or they ask about Australia, they were often I remember
being asked, what, oh, is Steve Irwin really famous in Australia?
(17:27):
And I'd have to sort of explain going, well, he is,
but probably not quite in the same way that you
guys go completely bananas for him.
S1 (17:34):
It's very interesting. And of course, the mother, Terry, of course,
is American. But but about Australia, you know, Robert was
the face of a big Tourism Australia campaign before Dancing
With the Stars. And he was just this week plugging
Australia Zoo on his social media. So is there some
kind of net benefit for us, like is this going
to benefit the Australian economy somehow?
S2 (17:54):
Of course. Gigantically I think there. Well, I mean, I
think that they're connected. So it's almost like tourism generally
and tourism specifically in the end. Um, lots of Americans
come to Australia wanting to go to Australia Zoo. It's
a as an entity, you know, growing up in Sydney,
I grew up knowing the Taronga Zoo. It's the only
zoo I kind of knew as a zoo. To Americans,
(18:14):
Australia Zoo is a much bigger, more centrally understood place,
and they often come to Australia wanting to go there,
and they do in large numbers. So um, and obviously because,
you know, the air traffic from the United States to
far north Queensland is not direct. There is a flow
on benefit really for everybody, because essentially many of those
(18:36):
tourists will come through the eastern capitals from America to
get to the Australia Zoo. So there is a kind
of collective benefit. There's a very specific benefit to the
family's enterprise. And again, this is again is this stuff
is very careful and deliberate. Absolutely. He knows what he's
doing on his socials, and absolutely he understands how all
the touch points land to market the zoo and the
(18:58):
idea of coming there. But collectively, as a country, it's
a very positive brand to represent us. And I think also, um,
there is a logical follow on where, you know, those
tourist dollars in order to get to to that location,
you pretty much have to flow through, you know, the
eastern capital cities of Australia to get there.
S1 (19:18):
Okay. And, Michael, just to wrap up on that note
of positivity, your piece about Robert Irwin, it is resoundingly positive.
I mean, this is the vibe that surrounds him, right? Like,
I was doing a little bit of a deep dive
and I saw that the New York Times, the headline
on their feature from about a week ago was Robert
Irwin is actually that nice? I mean, that's that's just
what he is, right? But I this might be the
(19:39):
Australian tall poppy syndrome sort of peeking through. But I
just want to ask you, is there a chance the
public might overdose on his sort of like, unrelenting, uh,
positivity and upbeat ness? Bitterness. And this could just be
me projecting my feelings of inadequacy that perhaps I'm not
as nice as Robert Irwin is all the time.
S2 (19:57):
So, look, the answer is, I don't know. I doubt it.
I feel like nice is nice, and nice is a
really easy brand to sell. I will give you one
controversial thought. I'm not a big believer in the tall
poppy syndrome, because I think in order to fall prey
to it, you have to trigger it. And the to
my mind, the tall poppy syndrome only ever really got
(20:19):
thrown at people who went overseas or went somewhere and
somehow turned their back. Kylie Minogue could argue there was
a period where people had a go at her, but
it would also happen to be a period where, you
know what felt like seconds after leaving Australia, she suddenly
manifested a kind of transglobal British accent. And I think
(20:41):
when people perceive any sense of falsehood in those moments,
that's where they react angrily. And that's where the patrol
puppy syndrome occurs in Robert Irwin's case. I think it's
really hard for that to happen. Nice is nice and
I don't know how you argue with nice, and I
think that in a context where everything else is a
(21:01):
real like the emotional kind of palette of the moment
is frustration, depression, fear, anger, all these things are kind
of being pushed out into the wider culture, and we're
consuming them. And it frustrates us. And I think, you know,
there was a piece I wrote a couple of years
ago about Christmas where essentially I'd articulated an idea to
(21:21):
one of our editors who said, you need to capture that,
which was we got to the end of the year,
and there are just moments where you think it's just
a relief that we got here, like we it was
a success just getting here. And I think in contrast
to that, when Robert Irwin comes into the room and
he lights up the TV screen because he's lighting up
the room and he dances up a storm and he
gives you something to cheer for. And not only that,
(21:43):
you have even the cynical idea that all of this
is to make money for the Australia Zoo Yazoo somehow
through tourism and profile and celebrity. The answer the kind
of postscript to that becomes, that's true. And do you
know what they do with all that money? They actually
buy land and turn them into conserved wilderness, and conserved
(22:04):
wilderness costs money to conserve and protect, and it's not
revenue generating. So there's a sort of the story. And
in the Steve Irwin story, as much as the Robert
and Terri and Bindi Irwin story, there's an extraordinary nobility
at the heart of the commerce, which is, yeah, this
is a business. And yeah, it makes money. But look
what they do with this money. And look what this
(22:25):
conservation foundation has done to preserve Australian wilderness. I don't
know how people argue with that. I don't see any
negatives for the brand. And I think for him in America,
the experience of dancing with the stars will amplify that
substantially and in ways that we're probably still yet to see.
S1 (22:44):
Wow, Michael, thank you so much for your time.
S2 (22:48):
My pleasure. Always a pleasure.
S1 (23:02):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by myself
and Kai Wong. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Our
head of audio is Tom McKendrick. The Morning Edition is
a production of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
If you enjoy the show and want more of our journalism,
subscribe to our newspapers today. It's the best way to
support what we do. Search The Age or Smh.com.au. Subscribe
(23:29):
and sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter to receive
a comprehensive summary of the day's most important news, analysis
and insights in your inbox every day. Links are in
the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris. This is the
morning edition. Thanks for listening.
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