Poor ol' Steve, hey?

In the past week Australia has lost two of its most colourful sons: Steve Irwin "Wildlife Warrior" and Don Chipp, the provocative founder of the Australian Democrats.

Yesterday was the day after Fathers' Day in Australia, so what an awful time for Steve's beloved kids and wife. Trust him to die like that! They reckon he pulled the stingray's barb out of his chest himself before he died. Poor ol' Steve. What a bugger of a way to die.

Don went last week, but it 's not as sad because he was 81, which is a pretty good innings. Good ol' Don. He changed a lot of censorship laws in Australia. When he first started out as a minister, he could not even get a list of the censored books and items because the list itself was censored! There was one notorious example where a Noddy book (by children's author Enid Blyton) was banned because it contained the sentence "And Noddy walked down the country lane and felt a little queer". Don changed all that. But his most famous contribution was to our political vernacular( when he got so cheesed off and left the Liberals and formed his own party ) with the most wondrous political slogan OF ALL TIME which was:
KEEP THE BASTARDS HONEST !
Yeah, good ol' Don. Apparently the Queen used to flirt with him a bit!

I hate it when people die. Especially, I suppose, when it is premature. I watched an interview on "Enough Rope" last night with each of them, and it is interesting to hear how they wanted to be regarded. Don just hoped to be remembered as honest; a pollie who tried to keep his integrity. Steve wanted to be "an example" to the world in caring about the conservation of wildlife. Did you know he spent his fortune buying endangered habitats around the world? The greedy glitterati, corporate moguls, and amoral governments could learn a lot from him! He cherished his family and would have died a million times over for any one of them: there are a lot of judgemental people who could learn a lot from that, too..

R.I.P., mates.