'How do I go forward?' Robert Irwin opens up on the loss of his father in his most emotional interview yet

Robert Irwin has opened up on losing his father in his most emotional interview yet.

The Wildlife Warrior spoke on the CNN Podcast All There Is with Anderson Cooper about growing up without dad Steve Irwin, explaining how he tries to stay connected to him years after his death.

In the 50-minute interview, Robert said he feels connected to his late father the most when he is alone in nature, "in the middle of nowhere."

Watch the video above.

"There are moments where I'll be hit with this sense of – it's warmth," he said, tearing up.

"It's like something kind of wraps around me. And I will absolutely sit and just say, 'How do I go forward ... how do you move forward?'"

Robert added that it can be difficult to process his grief while living in the public eye and having his dad be "a constant thread" in his life.

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"Sometimes one of the nicest things is to just sit, and kind of just let it all go," he said.

"I let it all pour out, and it feels like I'm kind of letting him in. And sometimes I just sit and just go, 'What's next? How do I put one foot in front of the other?' There's no answer, but it almost feels like there's a resolution that comes out of that."

Steven Irwin died in 2006 at the age of 44, when his son was only two years old.

Robert said he "completely" and "totally" felt the absence of his dad while he was growing up.

"When I walk around our place at Australia Zoo, being here, in the place that he built, I feel him so completely, but it's impossible not to feel that equal sense of emptiness of him not being here," Irwin said.

Robert also opened up about how his sister Bindi grieves their father differently; she was eight years old when Steve died.

"My struggle is the fear of losing those memories of him, my sister had so much more time with him ... that grief journey is different for her," he said.

"I think it stings more [for her], for me it's a blanket that's suffocating me, but for her it's a stab."

Robert got visibly emotional at times during the interview, including when he revealed his "greatest fear" in life is forgetting how his dad "felt."

"That was something that would really keep me up at night," he says.

"One of the most saving graces in keeping him alive in my life is my mum. She is the reason why I have such a clear picture of who he was."

He recalled watching documentaries starring his father every morning for years after his death, which helped him remember his dad.

"My dad is almost a feeling [more] than a memory; the memories I have of him are so incredibly vague," he said.

"One of the greatest gifts in my life is the fact that my childhood growing up with my dad was all captured on camera."

Robert added that he feeling like sometimes his dad is trying to show him something. 

One instance that stuck out for the wildlife warrior Dancing with the Starswas when he was leading a team on a crocodile research expedition in Northern Australia for the first time ever.

They came across a massive crocodile Robert had to jump on so the team could tag it.

"I'm nervous, my heart is pounding ... we do the capture and this (crocodile) put me through it ... he's death rolling, head shaking, couple of really close calls on my behalf," he recalled.

When he finally got the crocodile in the position to tag it and attach the trackers, someone on his team realised it had been tagged before.

Robert said it was impossible, as it was missing the microchip tracker that they put onto every crocodile their team had caught in recent years.

"'I was like, 'That's impossible, we've never caught this croc', it wasn't in any of our records," he said.

"While I'm sitting, there lying on this crocodile, there's this very distinct marking in one of his scales, and I just had this little epiphany."

'I thought, 'Wait a minute, let me check this photo' ... it was this old photo that I remembered of my dad with a giant crocodile that he had caught 20 years ago, I looked at this photo and I thought, 'Yep, that's it.'

"It was a crocodile that my dad had caught 20 years ago and the craziest bit is we managed to use satellite technology to figure it out, and we caught him in the exact same spot that he did.

"It felt like that was Dad being like, 'This is your first time leading the team. You're on the right track. Here's a little sign.' It felt like that to me."

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