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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Entertainment
Kelly Burke

The death of Dr Duncan: the gay hate crime that changed Australia

Dr George Duncan
The drowning is also the subject of a new book, The Death of Dr Duncan, by Tim Reeves. Composite: South Australia police/Wakefield Press

“There was no struggle, nothing. And then he just slipped away ... the river swallowed him.”

This is how a witness described the final seconds of Dr George Duncan’s life, as told to the ABC in 2005, 33 years after the 41-year-old University of Adelaide academic drowned in the River Torrens and posthumously set in motion the zeitgeist of gay law reform in Australia.

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