For more than thirty years, Sydney woke up to find one word chalked on its footpaths in beautiful copperplate: Eternity. Nobody saw who wrote it, and for years nobody knew. The writer turned out to be Arthur Malcolm Stace, a small, quiet man from Redfern who had grown up in poverty, drunk his way through his young years, served in France in the Great War, and then found God at a church tea meeting in Broadway in 1930. By the time he died in 1967 the word had been chalked, by the usual estimate, about half a million times, and it has since been lit up across the Harbour Bridge and set into the pavement of Sydney Square.
A Hard Start in Redfern
Arthur was born on 9 February 1885 at Redfern, the fifth child of William Wood Stace, a labourer from Mauritius, and his Australian-born wife Laura, née Lewis. The Dictionary of Sydney says both his parents were alcoholics. The family was poor, and Wikipedia records that young Arthur stole bread and milk and went through bins for scraps to get by.
By Stace's own later account, given in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, he became a ward of the state at 12, worked two years in a south-coast coal mine, was gaoled for drunkenness, lost job after job and turned to thieving. He said his two sisters were prostitutes and his two brothers died "derelict drunkards". He had very little schooling and, says the Dictionary of Sydney, was already a heavy drinker by the time he started his first job at 14.
Grog, Two-Up and the Underworld
His early years were spent in and out of gaol and hospital, including a stay at Broughton Hall psychiatric clinic at Callan Park. He worked briefly for Sydney City Council, but mostly he lived off the underworld, working as a "cockatoo" (a lookout) for illegal establishments and carrying sly grog to brothels, including one in Surry Hills run by his sister. In his own words, quoted by the ADB: "Off and on I worked as a grog-runner from a hotel in Surry Hills to two-up schools and houses of ill-fame."
The Great War
Stace enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on 18 March 1916. His papers describe a labourer 5 ft 3 in (160 cm) tall, with grey eyes and dark brown hair. Wikipedia gives his service number as 5934, with the 16th Reinforcements of the 19th Battalion, 5th Brigade. He served as a private with the 19th Battalion in France, the ADB says probably as a drummer and stretcher-bearer, and later at AIF headquarters in England. He came home in February 1919, and the Dictionary of Sydney notes he returned partially blind in one eye. He suffered bouts of bronchitis and pleurisy, and was discharged medically unfit in 1919.
Home again, he fell straight back into his old ways. The Dictionary of Sydney describes years of depression and drinking, "with the bottle dominating his days and the courts regularly hauling him in".
A Cup of Tea and the Rock of Ages – 1930
On 6 August 1930 Stace went along to a "tea and rock bun" meeting at St Barnabas' Church on Broadway, where Archdeacon R. B. S. Hammond drew big, hungry crowds of down-and-outs. Stace was converted on the spot and gave up the grog. He liked to say afterwards: "I went in to get a cup of tea and a rock cake but I met the Rock of Ages."
His life turned right around. He spent his spare hours helping men who were as far down as he had been. He worked at Hammond's hostels, led open-air meetings, and visited the Francis Street Methodist hostel, Callan Park mental hospital and the Lazaret. For more than 20 years he led open-air meetings on the corner of George and Bathurst Streets. For a time he worked at one of the Hammond Hotels in a converted factory in Buckland Street, Chippendale, where unemployed men were fed, shaved and tidied up to help them find work.
"Eternity, Eternity" – John Ridley at Burton Street
Stace took a job as janitor at the Burton Street Baptist Tabernacle in Darlinghurst and joined its congregation. It was there, the Dictionary of Sydney says in November 1932, that he heard the evangelist John G. Ridley MC preach. Wikipedia names the sermon "The Echoes of Eternity", taken from Isaiah 57:15: "For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth Eternity, whose name is Holy …"
Ridley cried out: "Eternity, Eternity, I wish I could sound or shout ETERNITY through the streets of Sydney … You've got to meet it, where will you spend Eternity?" Stace remembered: "I felt a powerful call from the Lord to write 'Eternity'. I had a piece of chalk in my pocket, and I bent down right there and wrote it."
He could not explain the beautiful handwriting. "The funny thing is that before I wrote it I could hardly have spelt my own name. I have no schooling and I couldn't have spelt Eternity for a hundred quid. But it came out smoothly in beautiful copperplate script. I couldn't understand it."
Thirty-Five Years of Chalk
Wikipedia says Stace would get up at 4 am several mornings a week and head out before dawn, often to a different suburb each day, chalking the word on footpaths, doorsteps and railway station entrances. Workers coming into town would find it freshly written, but never saw the writer. The ADB has him saying he wrote it "at least 50 times a day".
He used yellow waterproof chalk, and the Dictionary of Sydney says he later moved to longer-lasting crayon. The word turned up from Martin Place to Parramatta, though he had a soft spot for the dark pavements of Kings Cross. "Some of them concrete paths won't take it," he complained. "Too light to show up." When he was "running hot" it cost him "six bob a day in chalk". A single inscription could last three to six months, and he was told one in Surry Hills lasted twelve.
For a while he tried other words, such as "Obey God", but in his words "it wasn't as good. Eternity makes 'em think." Wikipedia adds that someone used to follow him around turning his Eternity into "maternity", so he began giving it a big, ornate capital E. Pavement-chalking broke a City Council rule, and Stace said he was very nearly arrested many times, telling police he "had permission from a higher source".
Marriage and Pyrmont
On 22 January 1942 Stace married Ellen Esther ("Pearl") Dawson at St Barnabas' Church, giving his occupation as "missioner". Wikipedia says Pearl proposed to him. They lived for many years in Bulwara Road, Pyrmont, and the ADB pictures him then as "a birdlike little man with wispy white hair".
Mr Eternity Unmasked – 1956
For years the "Eternity man" was one of Sydney's great mysteries. Newspaper writers speculated, and every so often a false confession kept the puzzle going. In 1956 the Rev Lisle M. Thompson, minister of the Burton Street Tabernacle, caught his own janitor in the act. Thompson wrote the story up in a short tract, The Crooked Made Straight, and the Sunday Telegraph named Stace in an article by Tom Farrell on 21 June 1956.
Wikipedia says that in 1963 the photographer Trevor Dallen got Stace to pose for four photographs for The Sun. When Dallen went off for more film, Stace was gone by the time he got back. Wikipedia calls these the four known photographs of Stace, and one is held by the National Library of Australia.
The Last Years
Pearl died in 1961. Stace moved to the Hammondville homes in Sydney's south, in 1965 according to the ADB, and died there of a stroke on 30 July 1967, aged 82. He left his body to the University of Sydney medical school and his savings to Baptist missions. His remains were buried with Pearl's at Botany Cemetery, now part of Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park, in 1969.
The Eternity in the GPO Bell
Of all the chalk Stace put down, only two original inscriptions are known to survive. One is a piece of blackboard-painted cardboard he chalked for a friend. The Dictionary of Sydney names her as Thelma Dodds, and it is now in the National Museum of Australia in Canberra.
The other is inside the bell of the General Post Office clock tower in Martin Place. The tower was taken down during the Second World War as a precaution against bombing and not put back until 1964. The Dictionary of Sydney says the faded word was "allegedly" found when the tower was being restored in 1997, and suggests that, if genuine, it was probably written while the bell was at ground level. Wikipedia instead says workmen noticed it when the bell came out of storage during the 1960s rebuilding.
Eternity in the Pavement – Sydney Square
In 1968 Sydney City Council decided to set Eternity permanently into footpaths around the city, but the council was sacked before it happened, and the state administrators who took over weren't interested. In the end Ridley Smith, the architect of the 1977 shopping arcade below Sydney Square, had the word inscribed in wrought aluminium on the floor. The ADB describes it as unveiled in 1977 in a paving stone near the Sydney Square waterfall. In 2001 the City of Sydney was granted a trademark on the script to protect it from commercial misuse, according to Wikipedia.
Across the Harbour Bridge – New Year's Eve 1999
The best-known tribute came at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve 1999, when Eternity blazed across the Sydney Harbour Bridge during the millennium fireworks. Ignatius Jones, who created the show, said: "it's incredibly Sydney. It symbolised for me the madness, mystery and magic of the city." Wikipedia adds that the word also featured in the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games opening ceremony.
Martin Sharp and the Artists
The artist Martin Sharp did more than anyone to keep the word in front of Sydney, painting it in bright colours in many works. His 1990 screen print Eternity is in the National Gallery of Australia. His version also became the centrepiece of a panel of the Federation Tapestry by the Victorian Tapestry Workshop. Sharp said of Stace: "He never had a book published, but he self-published all over the streets and pavements of Sydney. He writes an entire novel in that word."
The poet Douglas Stewart wrote of "that shy mysterious poet Arthur Stace, whose work was just one single mighty word". Keith Dunstan put him in his 1979 book Ratbags. George Gittoes worked Stace's face into Ancient Prayer, which won the Blake Prize for religious art in 1992. The word has also turned up in a Banksy piece in New York in October 2013, which shows a worker washing an Eternity tag away.
Film, Opera and Stage
Lawrence Johnston's film Eternity came out in 1994. Jonathan Mills and Dorothy Porter's chamber opera The Eternity Man was performed at the Sydney Festival in 2005, and in 2008 Julien Temple made it into a film. Asked why Sydney is so taken with Stace, Porter said the city is "ephemeral, built from sandstone, itself almost dissolvable", with "a dreadful history of wiping out itself", so perhaps he "appeals to us as a symbol of that past, that other lost Sydney and its history".
The old Burton Street Tabernacle closed as a church in 1996. The City of Sydney restored it as a theatre, and it was named the Eternity Playhouse on 5 December 2011, with Stace's script on the marquee and through the building. The National Museum of Australia also named its Eternity gallery after his story, and the Christian newspaper Eternity, founded in 2009, took its name from the word.
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Timeline
- 9 February 1885 – Born at Redfern.
- About 1897 – Becomes a ward of the state at 12, by his own account.
- 18 March 1916 – Enlists in the AIF and serves with the 19th Battalion in France.
- 1919 – Returns in February and is discharged medically unfit.
- 6 August 1930 – Converted at St Barnabas', Broadway.
- November 1932 – Hears John Ridley at Burton Street Tabernacle and starts writing Eternity.
- 22 January 1942 – Marries Pearl Dawson at St Barnabas'.
- 21 June 1956 – Named as Mr Eternity in the Sunday Telegraph.
- 1961 – Pearl dies.
- 1963 – Trevor Dallen takes the only known photographs.
- 1964 – GPO clock tower rebuilt.
- 30 July 1967 – Dies at Hammondville, aged 82.
- 1969 – Buried at Botany Cemetery.
- 1977 – Eternity inscription laid at Sydney Square.
- 1994 – Lawrence Johnston's film Eternity.
- 31 December 1999 – Eternity lights up the Harbour Bridge at midnight.
- 2005 – The Eternity Man opera at the Sydney Festival.
- 5 December 2011 – Eternity Playhouse named.
- 2025 – Blue plaque at St Barnabas', Broadway.
Where the Sources Disagree
- How many times? The Dictionary of Sydney and Wikipedia both give about half a million, more than 500,000. That is an estimate, not a count. The ADB only quotes Stace himself saying "at least 50 times a day".
- The years he wrote it: the Dictionary of Sydney says 1932 to 1966, when he moved to Hammondville, while Wikipedia says 1932 until his death in 1967.
- Moving to Hammondville: the ADB and Wikipedia say 1965, and the Dictionary of Sydney says 1966.
- His conversion: the ADB says he was inspired by "a preacher at Pyrmont" in August 1930. The Dictionary of Sydney and Wikipedia place it at R. B. S. Hammond's meeting at St Barnabas', Broadway, on 6 August 1930.
- Ridley's sermon: the ADB only says "in the 1930s". The Dictionary of Sydney says November 1932, and Wikipedia gives 14 November 1932.
- Discharge date: the ADB says he was discharged on 2 May 1919, and Wikipedia says 2 April 1919.
- The GPO bell: Wikipedia says the word was found when the bell was reinstalled in the 1960s, while the Dictionary of Sydney says it was "allegedly" found during the 1997 restoration and is cautious about whether it is genuine.
- Sydney Square: the ADB calls it a brass inscription, and the Dictionary of Sydney and Wikipedia say wrought aluminium.
- Birth year: the ADB, Dictionary of Sydney and Wikipedia all say 1885, though one Wikipedia summary line and some websites give 1884.
My Earlier Posts
- St Vincent's Hospital – Victoria Street – Darlinghurst
- Hangings at Darlinghurst Gaol
- Sydney Past & Present – Chapter 8 – The Later Thirties
Sources
- Chris Cunneen, "Stace, Arthur Malcolm (1885–1967)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 12, 1990: adb.anu.edu.au
- Shirley Fitzgerald, "Stace, Arthur", Dictionary of Sydney, 2008: dictionaryofsydney.org
- Shirley Fitzgerald, "Eternity", Dictionary of Sydney, 2008: dictionaryofsydney.org
- "Arthur Stace", Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org
- "Eternity (graffito)", Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org
- Tom Farrell, Sunday Telegraph, 21 June 1956, as cited by the Dictionary of Sydney
- Lisle M. Thompson, The Crooked Made Straight, tract, as cited by the Dictionary of Sydney
- Sharon Verghis, "One word sermon we can't forget", Sydney Morning Herald, 19 January 2005, as cited by the Dictionary of Sydney
- Photographs from Wikimedia Commons, credited under each picture