What kept me glued to the TV today....

were the many tributes on Channels 7, 9 and 10 to the life of the "Crocodile Hunter", Steve Irwin, who sadly died in a freak accident yesterday at the Great Barrier Reef. Steve Irwin had apparently been filming an episode for his daughter's pilot environmental TV programme and had been swimming above a stingray, when the stingray lashed out and he was hit in the chest with the ray's poisonous barbs.

According to news reports, there was video footage of that moment (which experts on rays said was "one in a million") which apparently showed Steve Irwin plucking the barb from his chest before collapsing.

With the many times that we had spent watching him on wildlife programmes cheat death at the jaws of a huge crocodile or the fangs of some of the most poisonous snakes (including a taipan, the most venomous snake in the world, according to an article off the website of the Singapore newspaper, the Straits Times), I suppose he had in the public mind developed an aura of invincibility. That was certainly the case with me - I was a bit incredulous when I saw the breaking news tag interrupting "Huey's Cooking Adventures" on Channel 10 yesterday afternoon.

It's a monument to the life of this chap and his efforts at wildlife conservation that his untimely death is the leading news in his home country and around the world, with tributes pouring in from all over and where politicians even delayed the start of the parliamentary session today with fitting words of homage.