Things have just become a little surreal for Robert Irwin. And that’s saying something for a guy who willingly hangs out with crocodiles.
The 20-year-old conservationist, passionate photographer and co-host of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! Australia is nominated for TV’s top gong, the coveted TV WEEK Gold Logie Award for Most Popular Personality On Australian Television. And he’s up for the Silver Logie for the Bert Newton Award for Most Popular Presenter too – not bad for his first real hosting gig on television.
Just getting to the Logies will be an adventure for Robert, son of the late wildlife warrior Steve Irwin.
“I fly straight in from our crocodile- research expedition on Cape York [in far north Queensland],” Robert explains. “So, I’ll be neck-deep in mangrove mud catching 15-foot-long [4.5 metres] crocodiles. And then I get on a boat, cross a river in a four-wheel-drive and travel about 80 kilometres to a remote airport.
“A little plane flies me all the way down to Sydney and then I’m on the red carpet at the Logies.”
In the words of his dad, “Crikey!” But Robert takes it all in his stride.
“My life … has become the most enormous juxtaposition,” he says. “And doing something like this [he points to his suit covered in gold confetti at TV WEEK’s special photo shoot] is so different [to his everyday life], but I just really embrace it.”
Once he recovered from the shock of learning he was a nominee for the Gold Logie – “This is so meaningful and humbling,” he says of the honour – Robert told the rest of the Irwin gang back at Australia Zoo on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast: his mother Terri, sister Bindi and brother-in-law Chandler Powell. Their excitement was palpable.
And yet there was one reaction Robert wasn’t expecting.
“When I told my mum, she adopted a very serious tone and said, ‘I can’t imagine how proud your dad would be,’” he says. “And I wasn’t ready for that. She was like, ‘Whoa, that’s really powerful, because not even Dad got that recognition.’”
While Steve was posthumously inducted into the Logie Hall of Fame in 2007 following his tragic death while diving in Queensland in 2006, he was never nominated for the Gold Logie. That fact is not lost on Robert, who grew up idolising his father and clearly does to this day.
Like his father, Robert has an unbridled, infectious enthusiasm for …well, everything. He is, in many ways, a croc-loving chip off the ol’ Irwin block.
“I feel my mum and dad taught me the most about having a passion – and then also having the dedication and persistence to spread that message to as many people as you can,” he says.
The young man talks of his famous father with great affection.
“The most passionate human being, multiply that by 10, and that was Dad,” Robert says. “He approached everything at a hundred per cent. If I can be half the person he was, I’ll be very, very happy. He was truly a superhero.
“And there was so much more to Dad than I think people realise. As a dad, he was just the most devoted human being. I lost him very young, but that passion he had it couldn’t help but take hold. All I can hope is that I’m doing him proud.”
Robert is aware of the significance of the Gold Logie nomination. It could mark a fork in the river. For the first time, he’s “forging his own path”.
“I’ve always been continuing his legacy, which is incredibly important to me,” Robert says of following in his father’s footsteps. “But now I get to continue that legacy and create my own. And for the first time, this feels like recognition of that. I can’t tell you how much that means to me.”
Of course, the race for Gold also includes his I’m A Celebrity co-host Julia Morris, who he’s quick to praise (“What an honour to stand beside her”) and who he credits for guiding him through his first season of the reality show.
“I remember while filming, Julia and I were talking about comedy and she was saying, ‘Oh, your timing with this was really good,’” Robert recalls. “And I said, ‘Thanks, but comedy isn’t really what I do.’
“And she goes, ‘You’re hosting a comedy show now; you’re doing comedy. And I’m like, ‘I’m doing comedy – I can do that!’”
A high point for Robert while filming I’m A Celebrity was seeing someone like eventual 2024 winner Skye Wheatley overcome her fear of snakes.
“She went into the viper room, surrounded by snakes, terrified,” he says. “By the end of it, she was asking to pick up one of the snakes. That’s exactly what I wanted to achieve with that show.”
The Irwins are no strangers to animal hijinks at the Logies. In 2018, a 14-year-old Robert managed to bring a python to the Logies red carpet. And who can forget when Steve brought a snake on stage at the 2003 Logies and it managed to nip presenter Tim Webster on the thigh?
Any ideas for this year, Robert?
“I’ve got an alligator named Sanchez,” he says excitedly. “I reckon I could get him on a plane and bring him to the Logies. Would that be OK?”
Sure, what could possibly go wrong?
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