She is barely eight years old and lost her father, Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter, only four months ago. But today Bindi Irwin will travel to the United States to seek stardom — amid muted fears that she is being pushed too far, too fast from a childhood already interrupted by tragedy.

Bindi Irwin is to front a new 26-episode show, Bindi, the Jungle Girl, that is to be shown on the Discovery Kids channel.

Australian tourism chiefs, for whom her father was a golden asset, have picked up on Bindi’s emerging fame and have given her top billing in events in Los Angeles and New York for G’Day USA Week, a promotion aimed at bolstering tourism to Australia. She is also scheduled to appear with leading talk-show hosts including David Letterman and Ellen DeGeneres, give a speech to the National Press Club in Washington and perform on stage with the internationally known Australian child entertainers the Wiggles.

Outwardly, she goes with the backing of most Australians, who were moved by the brave eulogy she delivered at her father’s memorial service. Child psychologists who posed questions about her ability to fill her father’s shoes — her stated ambition — were met with public words of reassurance from her mother, Terri, and Irwin’s manager, John Stainton, both of whom emphasised that the course was Bindi’s choice. In an editorial yesterday, though, the Melbourne Age newspaper bluntly put the questions about Irwin Inc that many Australians harbour but few are prepared to ask.

“Clearly studios can see the same talent in her that made her father a household name — the next generation. But a fitness video, a cooking video, an appearance with The Wiggles — is it too much, too soon?” said The Age. “Her affinity with nature, like her father’s, is well documented and those who support her have always said this is the life Bindi wants for herself. Can she understand it? From here, the public is part of her life. So before we make a heroine out of this little girl, as we made a hero of her father, let’s look at her tiny shoulders and wonder how they could support such a burden.”

Stainton defended Bindi’s busy schedule yesterday, saying that she would not have to do anything she did not want. “My criterion is, if Bindi doesn’t want to do it that day, if she wants to go to the zoo or the beach, then that’s what we’re doing. That is the priority; it is what she wants to do.”

Australian tourism chiefs will be hoping that, as their latest ambassador, Bindi does not attract the unwelcome attention now focused upon Laura Bingle, the Sydney model who was the face of last year’s Where the Bloody Hell are You? promotion. Bingle, 19, had been linked romantically to several high-profile sportsmen, in very quick succession.

And after all that the number of visitors to Australia fell. The intrigues prompted the Sydney Daily Telegraph newspaper to ask of Bingle yesterday: “Where the bloody hell hasn’t she been?”

Drawing the crowds

In numbers, the greatest promotion was the postwar £10 Poms scheme, in which more than one million British citizens chose to emigrate to Australia — many paying only £10

Source: The Age, University of Sussex

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