

"I found him essentially very much a person of what you saw is what you got - there was nothing contrived, he was a genuine, one-off remarkable Australian individual and I am distressed at his death." "He was a great Australian icon," he said. Prime Minister John Howard says Irwin's death has shocked and horrified the people of Australia.

His body was taken from the morgue in Cairns and put on a private jet for the journey to the Sunshine Coast. The 44-year-old wildlife crusader died after a stingray barb pierced his heart off Port Douglas. Thousands of fans from across Australia and around the world have made the pilgrimage to Irwin's Australia Zoo on the Sunshine Coast to pay their respects to the 'Crocodile Hunter'. "The stingray attack, the CPR and medical efforts were all captured on film.The body of Steve Irwin has been returned to his family on the Sunshine Coast after his death in far north Queensland. "Steve had this rule that no matter who was injured we had to keep filming," he said. Once back on Croc One, a second camerman took over so Justin could give Steve mouth-to-mouth - something he continued to do for an entire hour until paramedics took one look at him and declared him dead. Perhaps knowing his injuries were far more serious than suspected, the cameras even caught the heartbreaking moment Steve turned to Justin and calmly said, "I'm dying." Those would be his last words. "As we're motoring back I'm screaming at one of the other crew in the boat to put their hand over the wound and we're saying to him things like, 'Think of your kids, Steve, hang on, hang on, hang on.'" Even if we'd been able to get him into an emergency ward at that moment we probably wouldn't have been able to save him because the damage to his heart was massive," Justin said. Steve died in a freak accident 14 years ago today
