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5:55AM Sunday 05 July, 2009

Stainton films documentary series at Noosa

4 September 2008

| By Grant Reynolds

John Stainton fondly remembers the stories he shared with Steve Irwin during their 15 years creating wildlife documentaries.

Stories of attacks by Australia’s most fierce and deadly predators.

The day before the anniversary of the Crocodile Hunter’s death, Mr Stainton was on Noosa Main Beach filming the re-enactment of one of those stories - a fatal shark attack at Perth’s Cottesloe Beach in November 2000.

The scenes are for a 15-part series to air on the Discovery Channel in the United States early next year, with old news footage, survivor interviews and re-enactments to tell the stories “from every angle”.

On each location Mr Stainton’s film company enlisted the help of locals, in search of faces similar to those involved rather than professional actors.

As a man who had experienced first hand the grief of losing a friend to the fatal blow of a stingray barb, Mr Stainton said it helped him to relate to survivors as they relived their own trauma.

“I find it very emotional talking to people, sitting one on one with people who’ve lost loved ones,” he said. “I can sympathise, I know what they’re going through.

“By telling their stories it’s immortalising them, committing them to our film history.”

But he said the accident that took his close friend and colleague would never be revisited via the small screen.

“Never, too close to home,” Mr Stainton said.

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