Rachel Syers chats to Terri and Bindi Irwin about their untouched piece of land in Cape York, known as the Steve Irwin Nature Reserve, and how it may play an important role in curing cancer and creating ground-breaking medicines.
Terri Irwin’s voice over the phone from her office at Australia Zoo on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast is filled with so much enthusiasm and drive that you can almost see her smiling. She speaks about a new project that not only will keep her late husband Steve’s dream alive, but could possibly save millions of lives.
Terri admits it’s a needle in a haystack, but the chance of Steve Irwin’s legacy producing a cure for cancer is what has Terri so passionate.
It’s been seven years since the shock passing of the ‘Croc Hunter’, but the larger-than-life Aussie and his love for the environment could now have remarkable repercussions on a global scale of saving lives.
Terri is allowing a team of researchers to visit 135,000 hectares of pristine environment on Cape York known as the Steve Irwin Nature Reserve, in their search for a cure for cancer and other diseases as part of the decade-long work by the Eskitis Institute at Griffith University.
The fact that this untouched parcel of land could hold the secrets to ground-breaking medicines is made all the more sweeter when Terri explains her extra jubilation comes from the recent news that after she has spent millions of dollars and years fighting threats of mining on the reserve, Queensland Premier Campbell Newman recently announced Steve’s land would be forever protected from mining interests.
It all started earlier in 2013 when Terri took Bindi 15, and Robert, 10, on a visit to Griffith University with their Distance Education teacher and learnt of Eskitis Institute’s research into drug discovery for the treatment and prevention of cancer, infectious diseases and neurodegenerative disease, as well as building unique resources including the Nature Bank and the Queensland Compound Library.
The Nature Bank is a storehouse of 200,000 natural products collected from more than 45,000 plants and marine invertebrates, and which may provide the key to developing new therapeutic drugs.
So passionate about the research is Terri that she has also just been appointed to the new Eskitis Foundation Board.
“I am so proud that the Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve will be the base for medical research with Griffith University’s Eskitis Unit,” Terri tells Onya Magazine.
“With so many unique flora types on the reserve, I am confident we will make some amazing discoveries.
“I mean, can you imagine just how amazing it would be if they found that one species there that could actually save someone’s life?” says Terri.
Bindi backs up her mother’s enthusiasm, also telling Onya Magazone about how proud she is of her family’s involvement in such an important research project.
“The Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve means so much to me, because the land is truly the greatest tribute to Dad and his legacy,” says Bindi.
“The Reserve is the perfect place to study ways to protect our natural resources for potential pharmaceutical value.
“People often think that conservation is only about protecting little woodland creatures, when ultimately conservation is about us; people. Everything we do on earth will come back to haunt us.”
Director of the Eskitis Institute, Professor Ronald Quinn AM, says a research team plans to visit the reserve in May or June to begin collection ‘thousands’ of samples for the Nature Bank.
“The logistics of it is the collection of various parts of the plant, so depending on the season … the flower, the seed, the leaves, the bark, the root – all different sections of the plant and then to keep those as separate samples,” he explains.
“So what we hope to do there is going to be very interesting because over the years we will try and collect in different seasons, so we might collect a plant when it is flowering and then when it is not.
“We are looking for anything new and I think we will come across something new at the reserve because it is so untouched and a different environment.”
Both Terri and the Professor say they hope the research will not only benefit the current generation, but have long-term benefits.
“If we collect 100 grams of material if it’s available, then that amount of material can last for 150 years,” says Professor Quinn.
“So I want to see it used for the future generations, to be put to use for research but also, it could potentially be used as a resource to maybe treat a disease we don’t have today but might have in the future.”