How identical twins Paula and Bridgette Powers save Australia’s seabirds with ‘Twinnies magic’

When the late Steve Irwin came to the rescue, he was in a troop carrier with a camera crew and a flurry of people. He had been called from nearby Australia Zoo to help a sick green sea turtle that had been found floating in the Pumicestone Passage in south-east Queensland. He charged into the water boots and all.

There he would encounter another rare natural phenomenon. Two identical women, speaking in unison, comforting the turtle. “He couldn’t take his eyes off them,” says their sister, Liz Eather. “He was quite taken with them.”

And it wasn’t just because he was suddenly experiencing double vision as the twin sisters stood in the water in their matching clothes. It was because he recognised something in them, something he had in…