Eternity Man

Cafe Reporter issue 1, June 2015, Jeff Bird
“For the next 37 years, he roamed the streets of Sydney writing his message on the footpaths in yellow chalk; Sydneysiders would awake to find his mysterious ‘one word poem’ without any clue about the identity of its author.”

The story goes that Arthur Stace was born in Balmain in 1884, growing up in abject poverty because his parents and two brothers were always drunk and his sisters were prostitutes. He had to fend for himself by stealing and had no education. During the First World War he served in France, was wounded and after returning home became a hopeless alcoholic.

Eventually a magistrate warned him that he would be sent to jail unless he reformed his ways. So he found God, gave up the drink and got a job. In 1930, he went to church and heard a sermon by a fire-andbrimstone preacher who told his congregation: “I wish I could shout ETERNITY through all the streets of Sydney”.

As Stace later recounted: “Eternity, Eternity, Eternity – his words were ringing through my brain as I left the church. Suddenly I began crying and I felt a powerful call from the Lord. I had a piece of chalk in my pocket and I bent down and wrote it. I had no schooling and I couldn’t have spelt ‘Eternity’ for a hundred quid, but it came out smoothly in beautiful copperplate script”. The legend of The Eternity Man was born.

For the next 37 years, he roamed the streets of Sydney writing his message on the footpaths in yellow chalk, usually in the early hours of the morning; Sydneysiders would awake to find his mysterious ‘one word poem’ without any clue about the identity of its author.

When he was finally outed, he gave a few interviews to journalists. He estimated that he had written his message about 500,000 times. He even demonstrated to journalists how he could barely write his name.

By the time he died in 1967, his was one of the legendary stories of Sydney folklore. It was a particular favourite amongst Christians, who marvelled at how the Lord had taught an illiterate to write and spread his message to the world in such elegant script.

Stace would have had a chuckle. As he used to tell his followers: “The great question is not what you make of Eternity. It’s what Eternity will make of you”

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