Diplomat, political activist and humanitarian Bruce Haigh has died, aged 77.
Haigh succumbed to cancer at Wollongong Hospital on Good Friday.
Born in Sydney, he attended high school in Perth, and worked on an oil rig and as a jackaroo, before being conscripted to the Royal Australian Armoured Corps to fight in Vietnam.
He returned to attend university, then later joined the Department of Foreign Affairs, with postings to Pakistan, South Africa, Saudi Arabia and Sri Lanka.
"He always was very empathetic and he believed in his convictions and stood up for his convictions," said his younger sister Christina Henderson.
"He hated to see people treated badly when he thought there was a much better way of doing things."
Haigh's humanitarian streak and passion for justice was a hallmark.
"Bruce is just a natural freedom fighter, he just stood up for the oppressed," said friend Julian Cribb.
Nowhere was this more apparent than during his posting as Second Secretary to South Africa during the oppressive apartheid regime in the 1970s.
Immortalised in film
Haigh befriended a young leader on the rise in anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko and famously helped to smuggle political journalist Donald Woods out of the country, a feat immortalised in the 1987 film Cry Freedom.
"[Biko] just had that indefinable and very strong presence of leadership. If he lived I think he would have been the leader of South Africa," Haigh told ABC broadcaster Richard Fidler in 2007.
"I was able to take messages around South Africa, I was able to shift people who were banned from one spot to another to meet with each other, I was able to take people across the border."
All at considerable risk to himself and without the knowledge of his superiors.
"He had a very acute political nose," Mr Cribb said.
"He understood what the winds of politics were doing in the countries he was posted to and he tried to inform his government how the winds of change were sweeping through these countries.
"But very often the governments of Australia refused to see that."
Support for refugees
Haigh's battle for the underdog continued when he was appointed a member of the Refugee Review Tribunal in 1995.
"He did a lot of good on that tribunal and he helped a lot of worthy cases get refugee status," said friend Tony Kevin.
Haigh became a commentator on Australia's place in the world, often appearing on The Drum on ABC TV and writing for many newspapers and journals.
"He articulated what many people felt about this country [that it had] become a vassal state of the United States and the danger of that," Mr Cribb said.
One of his last published articles rallied against the AUKUS agreement for nuclear-powered submarines carrying US technology to be based in Australia.
Family matters
Haigh was a passionate family man with two sons to his first wife Libby and two daughters to his second wife Jodie.
He lived in Mudgee and Orange in the NSW Central West, before embarking on a new chapter of his life, packing up his possessions and moving on to South-East Asia.
But the return of an earlier bout of cancer stymied those plans.
His sister, Christina Henderson, went to Laos to help bring him back to Australia and he was admitted to Wollongong Hospital.
"I went over, his three [surviving] children went over, one of his ex-wives came with us and one of my daughters," she said.
"It was quite a contingent but it was great.
"We had great support and our aim was to get him medevaced out of Laos back to Australia, which we managed," she said.
"He was brought back to Wollongong because that's where his postal address was when he left.
"He was very charismatic, and from my point of view we had a fabulous time together when we got together.
"He was always a big brother."
A memorial event to celebrate Haigh's life is being organised.
