Australia's famed Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin would not want a state funeral as he was "just an ordinary bloke", his grieving father Bob said on Wednesday.
BEERWAH (Australia): Australia's famed Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin would not want a state funeral as he was "just an ordinary bloke", his grieving father Bob said on Wednesday.
Fighting back tears, the weather-beaten, khaki-clad man told an impromptu news conference that his son had been his "best mate" and funeral arrangements would be up to his widow Terri.
Bob Irwin was speaking to reporters outside his son's Australia Zoo in this small northeastern town, where a massive shrine of flowers, notes and personal mementoes has been laid by thousands of fans of television's wildlife warrior.
The premier of northeastern Queensland state, Peter Beattie, had offered to provide a state funeral for Irwin amid the astonishing global outpouring of grief for the ebullient star.
But Irwin said his son would not have wanted a grand funeral.
"The state funeral would be refused because he's just an ordinary guy, and he wants to be remembered as an ordinary bloke," he said.
Irwin said his son had been well aware of the risks involved in his daring exploits with crocodiles, snakes and other deadly wildlife but accepted it as "part of the job".
"He wouldn't have wanted it any other way," he said of his son's death Monday from a freak attack by a stingray while filming off the famed Great Barrier Reef.
"He certainly did die doing something he loved doing, and that's a lot better than being hit by a bus," he said.
"But there's no comfort for me at this stage in anything at all.
"Steve and I weren't like father and son. We never were. We were good mates. I'll remember Steve as my best mate ever."
The man who went on to become one of the world's best-known conservationists through his Crocodile Hunter programme on Discovery Channel, was raised by Bob and his mother Lyn at their small wildlife park in Beerwah.
"I was already involved with reptiles, when he was little and that's when the mateship started. When he was six or seven years old we would just go out in the bush.
"Both of us over the years have had some very close shaves and we both approached it the same way in that we made jokes of it.
"That's not to say that we were careless but we treated it like it was just part of the job, nothing to worry about really."
Irwin said he was not surprised by the outpouring of grief around the world at his son's death, demonstrated in record hits on news reports of the tragedy which caused several internet websites to collapse.
"There's never been anybody else that I know of that had the personality that Steve had and the strength and the conviction of what he believed in.
"His message was conservation and he was such a strong person that people all over the world believed in him."
He said his son's American wife Terri was "holding up very well. She's extremely concerned for her children, Bindi and Robert, obviously."
Irwin said he would help Terri carry on the conservation work until the children, now aged eight and three, were able to take over.
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