Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Farewell to a great Aussie (not the croc man!)

In the midst of all the who ha over the death of Steve Irwin, who, lets be honest, died doing what he loved, interacting with nature in a way that put his life at risk, another death got overlooked, of another great Australian. One who, might I add, quite possibly did more for teaching the importance of looking after the environment than Steve Irwin, by writing stories about people whose lives interacted with the environment in a powerful way. For those that missed the news, it was Colin Thiele. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Thiele)

For those of you that never had the priviledge of reading his books as a child, you missed out big time, unless you saw the movies made of some of his books. Who could forget the plaintive cries, as a young boy realises his companion Mr Percival (a pelican) was shot, and might not survive in Storm Boy. I know I won't, especially since I had already been traumatised that night at the drive in. The previous movie was Willard, one of those horrible movies about rats from the 70's. Well, I was about 10 at the time!!!

So, anyway...Why am I writing about this? I guess for many of us, Steve Irwin, while he brought entertainment to millions around the world, will never have the impact on people's lives the way that Colin Thiele did to many of us that grew up in the 70's. He taught us through his books to look at the world with a respect that we might never have had otherwise, and to realise that our actions do affect others, something it seems that Steve may have only done, with his death.

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