‘It’s a lot’: Terri Irwin responds to Robert Irwin’s sex symbol status
As she opens up about grief and motherhood, Terri Irwin weighs into her son’s heart-throb reputation after THAT underwear campaign.
Stellar
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Even after decades in the spotlight as the matriarch of one of Australia’s most prominent and recognisable families, Terri Irwin remains something of an enigma.
Always happy talking about her great loves – her late husband Steve Irwin, daughter Bindi, son Robert and her family’s tireless work in the conservation sector – Irwin rarely makes the conversation about herself. Until now.
Having celebrated her 60th birthday last July with a small surprise party thrown by Bindi at Australia Zoo on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, where the family makes their home base, Irwin tells Stellar she now realises that sharing her experiences might inspire others “to step up and take a little bit of risk in their life”.
“I thought it would be really great, as a woman now in my 60s, to do this. You know, I’m embracing this new decade. I have to tell you, it just keeps getting better.”
Irwin keeps an understandably busy schedule, and in the coming weeks, she’s planning an overseas trip to the US, which will include a stopover in New York City.
“The full Sex And The City experience, minus the sex,” she jokes of the visit, which will include a shopping excursion for the look she will wear to the annual Steve Irwin Gala – a celebration of her late husband and a fundraiser for their charity, Wildlife Warriors – taking place on May 10 in Las Vegas.
“When I was younger, I used to splash out more often [on clothes],” Irwin admits.
“Now my fashion is probably like what Steve said about our marriage. He said, ‘I didn’t know I was shooting for comfortable. But this is great, and I’m loving it.’”
Like many sons, Robert likes to tease his mum about her sensible ensembles with lighthearted jibes like, “That broken-down look that you wear with your mum jeans is so in now.”
Irwin’s take? “I call it ‘accidental fashion’.”
After all, she keenly points out that comfort trumps couture when you may suddenly need to get down in the dirt and rescue a snake. As she reasons, “That’s not easy to do in stilettos.”
Much easier for her has been taking a step back and letting the spotlight shine on her children. Bindi, 26, is now chief executive at Australia Zoo, working alongside her husband of five years, Chandler Powell, 28.
When he’s not at the zoo, Robert, 21, is cultivating his burgeoning career in entertainment: he earnt a Gold Logie nod in 2024 for his co-hosting role on I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! and was recently announced as the first celebrity competitor on the next US season of Dancing With The Stars.
Irwin admits that she has mixed feelings about Robert’s growing status as a sex symbol, which was kickstarted when Stellar broke the internet with his fashion shoot in 2022 and again at the end of 2024, and was only further amplified by his smouldering Bonds underwear campaign that launched earlier this month.
“Steve used to say to me, ‘It wasn’t until I started filming and became the Crocodile Hunter that girls looked at me twice,” Irwin recalls with a laugh.
“He was 30, by the way, when we got married. So he goes, ‘Where were they?’ So on one hand, cool for Robert to have flattering attention, and on the other hand, it’s a lot.
“And Steve used to say to me, ‘I’m glad we met before I was the Crocodile Hunter, because I know 100 per cent for sure that you just love me.’”
In September of next year, Irwin will mark 20 years since Steve’s death following an accident with a stingray. Content with her life now, she isn’t looking to find love again.
“I’m sure there are a lot of lovely people out there in the world, but I did find my happily-ever-after, and I think I still have a lot of love in my life,” she says with a shrug.
“So I’m lonely for Steve, but I’m not lonely. I never mourn being on my own and not being in a relationship. I think we need to say that.
“I think women are still amazing, fulfilled, incredible people – even if you never marry, if you have four kids, or two kids, or no kids. There are no rules.”
Championing women has become more important to Irwin as she’s grown older and watched her own daughter become a mother.
(Bindi gave birth to her daughter Grace in March 2021.) She reels off statistics about income inequality, early retirement and the lack of female scientists, then urges women to keep challenging themselves as they age.
“You can still embark on a new venture,” she insists. “You don’t have to slow down.” She offers herself as proof.
On a tear of her own to hit the milestones on her 50-year plan for Australia Zoo, Irwin has seen Steve’s vision for luxury accommodation and meals adjacent to the zoo come to fruition with The Crocodile Hunter Lodge.
A side benefit of that effort is that she can duck out for dinner on nights when she doesn’t fancy cooking. “I say it’s ‘quality control’,” she offers with a giggle.
“As someone who was pushing 60, I didn’t want to leave something utterly challenging for my kids. And with [the] Warrior restaurant, I was determined to make it a place you could come to separately [without visiting the zoo], because this area really needed more fine dining. And I’m eyeing off a [Chef] Hat!”
It’s in keeping with Irwin’s lifelong tendency to never do anything by half. She could have just run a lemonade stand as a five-year-old growing up in Eugene, Oregon in the US, but she took things one further, creating her own blackberry cordial and recruiting other children from the neighbourhood to run a franchise operation.
By the time she was 18, she had purchased her own home.
“And what was funny [was] I went to the bank and they asked if my dad or my husband was coming to help me do this,” she recalls, laughing.
“That was interesting. And I don’t think it’s changed a lot.”
When she met Steve, she was 27, still working for her father’s trucking company and a self-described crazy cat lady. “Steve was not a cat guy, but he had to pretend to be a cat guy because he liked me,” she says.
“And of course, cats always love the one person in the room who doesn’t like cats.”
As they bonded over their shared passion for wildlife rescue, she fell hard and fast, moving across the Pacific Ocean to join Steve in Australia.
“Between meeting him and getting married, we probably spent the sum total of maybe six weeks together all up,” she says.
“I didn’t know anybody when I came over here. Luckily, I had very supportive parents, because it was difficult leaving family, friends, my job and just everything that I had created.”
Back then, Australia Zoo wasn’t the tourist mecca the Irwins would ultimately transform it into.
In fact, Irwin was often one of only 12 people at Steve’s croc shows. “Oh, my word, the world is a different place for Robert trying to find his way,” she says, noting how much her son has become the spitting image of his father.
“I remember when Robert was born, I said to Steve, ‘I have sisters and I have Bindi, and I don’t know anything about boys. What do I do?’ And he said to me, ‘Just keep him alive ’til he’s 25, and don’t sweat the little stuff!’”
Yet people can be quick to judge. “Parenthood is more controversial than religion,” she says wryly.
Listen to the latest episode of the Stellar podcast, Something To Talk About, below:
“And Steve and I had our kids around wildlife, so I realised it’s pretty cool for other people to say, ‘I would never let my kid around that wild animal. So, therefore I’m a better parent.’” Of that perceived moral victory, she stays rational: “I thought, let them have that.”
She gets an assist from Robert and Bindi, anyway, each of them having shown her how to handle relentless internet trolling. “Once, people had to write a letter to say, ‘I think you’re doing this wrong’,” she recalls.
“Now it’s streaming in front of you.” But it’s not just social media (and wardrobe choices) on which she regularly seeks her children’s counsel. “We just run everything by each other, naturally,” she adds of the family’s collaborative spirit.
Bindi also gives guidance on caring for granddaughter Grace.
“I’m a blast, but I follow the rules!” Irwin exclaims of life as a grandmother. “Bindi is a way better mother than I ever was. I say that with sincere admiration.
“I’m not berating myself. We all do our very level best, but she is so smart and so across everything – and Grace is the most healthy, well adjusted, beautiful little girl.”
Grace spends one night a week with Irwin, whom the preschooler refers to as “Bunny”.
The clan has kept Steve’s spirit alive for Grace – as Irwin did for her own children – by snuggling up on the couch with her to watch episodes of his TV series The Crocodile Hunter. In turn, Irwin is delighted that Grace has given Steve her own nickname.
“Walking through the zoo, she says, ‘There’s Grandpa Crocodile,’” Irwin says.
“And she’ll look at our wedding pictures, and she’ll be like, ‘You married Grandpa Crocodile?’ With Robert, because he resembles Steve enough that Grace mixes them up, she’ll often say ‘There’s Grandpa Crocodile’ to a picture of Robert. That’s kind of sweet, too.”
In the years since Steve’s death, Irwin has come to view his sudden and very public loss as a form of kindness.
“The fact that I never have to tell anyone what happened to Steve because they already know is kind of a blessing, especially at first when it’s really difficult,” she reasons.
“I’ve seen it with my friends when they’ve lost someone. It’s just a natural part of conversation to say, ‘Oh my God, what happened?’ and they have to relive it over and over and over again. I don’t, because people know what happened.”
Listen to the latest episode of the Stellar podcast, Something To Talk About, below:
Even so, Steve’s shirts still hang in her closet and his belongings remain scattered around her home. “It’s incredibly important that you travel your own road, and the only rules are that it can’t hurt you and it can’t hurt anyone else,” she says about the imperfect nature of handling grief. “You’re not going to find solace in the bottom of a bottle of tequila.
“That’s just going to hurt you. When someone passes, everyone in your circle responds with the best behaviour and the worst behaviour you could have ever imagined. And that’s shocking.”
Comfort comes in having her children live within the compound at Australia Zoo and working together to continue Steve’s conservation efforts. “I’m very blessed,” she says.
“Because in the real world, parents go to work. Sometimes they’re flight attendants and they see their kids every two weeks. Sometimes they’re military, and they see their kids every three months. That’s hard.”
Now, even as she indulges in designer duds with Stellar and reminisces about her past, Irwin can see that she’s never lost that early, enterprising spark, nor the value she has placed in family and hard work.
“Life and dynamics change, and you can forget about that five-year-old little girl that was doing these things,” she says. “My passion has been trying to hold on to that.”
See the full cover shoot and read the interview with Terri Irwin in Stellar today, inside The Sunday Telegraph (NSW), Sunday Herald Sun (VIC), The Sunday Mail (QLD) and Sunday Mail (SA).
For more from Stellar and the podcast, Something To Talk About, click here.
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