Jaws of Death…..1

A death in the family always brings out the divisions that normally lie just below the surface and, on a national level, that’s just what the death of Steve Irwin did.

His demise led news bulletins here for several days, coverage starting with a clearly upset Prime Minister, crowds gathering outside Irwin’s Australia Zoo, first hand accounts of his death and then his family’s gracious rejection of the offer of a state funeral.

One of the words often used to describe him was “larrikin”. I think what Australians usually mean by this is that he was a cheeky chap, a bit of a rascal, and a generally loveable bloke who did no real harm to anyone. And those tight shorts are very popular.

Just to make sure, I turned to the Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary (yes, there is one) and found a number of definitions, including “a person who acts with apparent disregard for social and political conventions.” This leads rather nicely into the second phase of press coverage.

Enter Germaine Greer in the pages of The Guardian, suggesting that her fellow countryman was a bit of an embarrassment for most Australians, and questioned his attitude to animals in general, and recalled his exploit with his baby son in his crocodile enclosure. Irwin, she said, insisted he was in control, “displaying the sort of self-delusion it takes to be a real Australian larrikin.”

I can’t help feel she was right on that score and that it was another example of the potentially disastrous “she’ll be right, mate” attitude I’ve mentioned before. But I digress.

If there’s one thing Australian popular opinion hates, it’s an intellectual, worse one who has made a name abroad and not returned, and worse still, one who’s a woman. Irwin was the antithesis of an intellectual and he got the public vote. Ms Greer was vilified as a “feral hag” and “childless” (now doesn’t that say a lot?) and readers of the Daily Telegraph were encouraged to email “the vicious old cow” to tell them what they thought of her. I bet they did, too.

If there’s a lesson from all this, it’s that Australia is a young nation, still to settle on a national identity.