Dave Pearson

She said, you're the only...

animal attack support group I can find anywhere in the world.

And I said, well, come on board.

And yeah, we've had dingo attacks, crocodiles, alligators, hippopotamus, bears, lions, wolves.

So just about anything that's going to attack someone, I think we've got in our group now.

In the early days, I would call everybody once a week, basically.

I was working in Newcastle, so it was a two-hour drive home of a Friday when I finished work for the week.

I would just be calling people the whole way.

And sometimes I'd get to six or seven people.

Some afternoons it was one person for a two-hour conversation.

So it was good.

Like it was a nice way to end my week is to see how everyone else was doing.

And it was therapeutic in a way for me and for others.

And it was then that...

I discovered what we were doing was far greater than just a bunch of people talking to each other.

And I'll say that because one Friday afternoon on the way home, I rang a guy in WA and he told me he was gonna commit suicide the day before.

And it was the fact that he knew I was gonna call him that he couldn't do it.

He said he didn't wanna let me down because he wanted to have a chat.

So that was a tough realisation.

I remember getting home and Deb would know whether I'd had a good week away or not because it was how long the hug lasts when I get home.