Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications and Broadband) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On 13 May, Australia lost a great hero. Don Ritchie died at his home in Vaucluse, where he had lived with his wife, Moya, for more than 50 years. He was born in 1926. Don served in the Australian Navy in the Second World War, on HMAS Hobart. He was in Tokyo Bay when the Japanese unconditional surrender was signed. He led a full life, surrounded by his family, who grieve his passing.

Don is best remembered for being the 'Angel of the Gap'. During the 50 years that Don lived opposite the Gap, he would go out and find people there, hesitating on the edge, about to take their own lives. He would use his remarkable empathy and compassion to bring them back from the edge. He would often bring them back to his house and give them a cup of tea. As he said, 'All I wanted to do was to get them away from the edge, to buy them time, to give them the opportunity to reflect and to give them the chance to realise that things might look better the next morning. I tried to get them to make the decision not to suicide—not now, not then and there. I don't counsel them; I don't tell them what to do with their lives. I just try to get them away from the edge.'

Don Ritchie saved so many lives with his human warmth and his ability to help people who were on the very edge, in every respect—at the end of their tether—and had given up and were about to destroy themselves. He was able to offer them a thread of love which they could then grasp and come back slowly from the edge.

At the funeral service Monsignor Tony Doherty, whom knew Don very well, talked about how he first met Don. Although Don was not a Catholic, and was known in his younger days for having quite uncharitable views about Catholics, he and Tony became very good friends. Tony said that he met Don more than 40 years ago. He described seeing this enormous, tall man—very tall—leaning over the edge of the Gap, flat on his belly, reaching over, talking quietly to a young Vietnamese man who was perched on a ledge about three or four metres below and was just about to jump. Tony said that when he saw Don talking to this young man, who was from a completely different background, he saw there a perfect expression of the love and the compassion that really defines the very best of our humanity. Don Ritchie, rest in peace.