Angel sells hope at the Gap

Through the window of his living room, Don Ritchie has a panoramic view of the Gap and the people who go up there. He has coaxed many back from the brink. Photo / Supplied

Don Ritchie's house overlooks the gateway to Australia: the tall sandstone cliffs that guard the entrance to Sydney Harbour.

It is a hauntingly beautiful spot - and a tragic one. Every year an estimated 50 people throw themselves on to the rocks below.

That figure would be higher were it not for Ritchie, who over the past half-century has coaxed hundreds of tortured souls back from the brink.

Now 84, he is the self-appointed patrolman of the Gap, as the cliffs are known - and, to some, a guardian angel.

Through the picture window in his living room, Ritchie has a bird's-eye view of the clifftop, which attracts a steady flow of tourists and joggers.

If he sees someone lingering a little too long, he crosses the road and offers them a cup of tea.

Over the years, many have followed him home. Others have not - but his kind words would have been the last thing they heard.

In his younger days, he would scale the fence and sometimes physically drag people to safety.

Once a woman nearly hauled him over the edge with her. Why does he do it?

"I'm just trying to save a life," he says. "I used to sell kitchen scales and bacon cutters, then I was state manager of a life insurance company. At the Gap, I'm trying to sell people life."

Yet still they come: the desperate, the depressed and the mentally disturbed. And Ritchie will not be around forever.

So the local Woollahra Council has devised a suicide prevention plan involving taller, curved fences, emergency telephones, CCTV cameras and signs bearing messages of hope. It has started on the programme but needs A$2.1 million ($2.6 million) to complete it.

The Federal Government has twice rejected its application for funding.

Last week on the election campaign trail, Prime Minister Julia Gillard promised $9 million to improve safety at suicide "hotspots".

The next day, the council learnt that no money had been allocated to the Gap.

The local MP and former Opposition leader, Malcolm Turnbull, pledged that the Coalition, if elected, would deliver the funds.

"I imagine some people just turn up, climb over the fence and jump," Turnbull told the Weekend Herald.

"But most pace up and down, hesitating, and anything that deters or delays them, makes it harder for them to take their lives, is an opportunity for them to choose life instead of death."

Ritchie and his wife, Moya, hope Woollahra's plan - which also involves beautifying the area - will go ahead.

"If it saved one life, it would be worth it," she said. "But I'd like to see more money spent on the care people are given before they come to the point of suicide."

Seated in his green leather armchair, where he spends his days reading and scanning the scene outside, Ritchie recalls some notable successes and failures.

"I got up one morning at about 7 o'clock, opened the blinds and saw a lady standing right opposite my window. I quickly got dressed and went over. She had already put her handbag and shoes outside the fence, which is pretty common. They very often leave something behind - sometimes it's a note, but generally a piece of clothing.

"I said to her: 'Why don't you come over and have a cup of tea?' She came with me and Moya made her breakfast. When she got home, she rang to say she was feeling much better.

Two or three months later she walked up the garden path with a magnum of French champagne."

On another occasion Ritchie - who was awarded a bravery medal in 1970 and an Order of Australia medal in 2006 - saw a man on crutches gazing out to sea.

"When I got there, he was gone. Only his crutches were left."

Most poignantly, perhaps, he remembers trying to talk a 19-year-old man out of killing himself. As he stood beside him, the young man jumped; his hat flew off and the wind blew it into Ritchie's hand.

"It turned out that as a little boy he had lived in the block of flats just behind our house and he used to play with our grandkids."

How did Ritchie feel? He removes his glasses and rubs his eyes. "It's just another case."

The cliffs - where Australians have been committing suicide since the 1860s - seem to draw those in despair. Recently a man in Western Australia drove across the continent to kill himself at the Gap.

In the past 10 days alone, according to a reliable source, four people have leapt to their deaths.

The casualties of recent years include Charmaine Dragun, a popular television newsreader.

Originally, the Ritchies bought their house for the view. A former Navy seaman, Don loves watching ships and boats.

"People say: 'How can you live in a place like this?"', Moya muses.

"But I think: 'Aren't we lucky to live here and be able to help someone?"'

Is Ritchie haunted by the people he could not save? "You can't do much about it."

Years ago, a painting depicting the sun shining on a group of ethereal figures was posted anonymously into Ritchie's letterbox.

A message on it said: "You are truly an angel that walks among us."

It hangs on the Ritchies' wall, next to Don's AO medal.