30/07/2025
MR ETERNITY - THE SYDNEY LEGEND
Today marks the 58th anniversary of the death of "Mr Eternity", Arthur Malcolm Stace.
Arthur ‘Eternity man’ Stace, the real story,57 years on from his death…. It’s 1885, in Balmain, and a boy is born into abject poverty.
His parents and two brothers are drunks and derelicts, his two sisters are destined for the wh******se and there’s nothing to fill his belly as he grows up.
It is no surprise Arthur Stace grew to be just 1.6m tall. It is also no surprise he became a lush and a petty criminal, too.
But when he passed away, 30 July, 1967, his life had undergone such a radical transformation the city christened him “The Eternity Man”.
Millions of Sydneysiders had seen his work; his poetry, his street art.
Stace spent the last 37 years of his life chalking the word “Eternity” in near perfect copperplate on footpaths and walls all across Sydney.
More than 500,000 times by his own estimation.
A one-word sermon written in yellow, waterproof crayon.
But for the first 25 years, the man behind the “Eternity” message was a ghost, skulking around Sydney at night.
Actor Grant Doyle as an old Arthur Stace in ABC’s biographical The Eternity Man.
In an essay on the “shy mysterious poet,” University of Sydney’s associate professor Peter Kirkpatrick said he left Sydneysiders intrigued by the mysterious act.
“His enduring mark on the city of Sydney, even though his actual inscriptions only ever survived a few weeks or days, was inspiring to those who stumbled across his message.
“Stace’s work tagged Sydney with an eternity which is simultaneously present and absent and which endured through its very ephemerality.”
Stace had his favourite spots, like the black footpaths of Kings Cross, but his penmanship could be spotted as far out as Liverpool.
There were very few photos of Arthur Stace.
In June 1956, Sunday Telegraph reporter Tom Farrell unmasked Arthur Stace as the mystery graffitist.
At 72-years-old, he was finally ready to divulge his secret and tell his extraordinary tale.
Stace spoke of his neglected childhood which turned into a hopeless adolescence.
At the age of 14, he was an alcoholic working in a south-east coalmine.
By 15 he was doing time in jail and bouncing from job to job.
He had one in Surry Hills as a tout for a local pub, carrying liquor from pubs to brothels, including his sister’s wh******se.
“I worked a fair bit as a cockatoo or lookout man for the pubs and two-up school and houses of evil around that part,” he said.
“So it went on for years, — always drunk. Always broke, I was just one of a bunch of no-good derelicts.”
Sunday Telegraph June 24, 1956 story about "The Eternity Man"
During World War One he signed up to the 19th battalion and served as a drummer and stretcher bearer, before a gas shell blast left him half blind.
Returning home his drinking spiralled downwards, from beers, then wine, to spirits and finally methylated spirit.
Arthur Stace was frail, sick and desperate.
“Every sixpenny handout went for another bottle of metho,” he said.
“I knew what I wanted was power — power to give the stuff up.
“I went to Regent Street police station and said to the sergeant, ‘Sergeant put me away. I’m no good and I haven’t been sober for eight years. Give me a chance and put me away’.”
“The sergeant sniffed and said, “You stink of metho, get out.”
“Outside the police station, I ran into a mob that was going along Broadway.
“One of them said, ‘Come on. There’s a cuppa tea and something to eat at the church hall.”
A plaque with the word ‘Eternity’, exactly the way Arthur Stace wrote it.
He said that night, August 6, 1930, he was ‘saved’.
Some time after that he heard the evangelist Reverend John Ridley preaching in Sydney.
“O that I could go out into the streets of Sydney and say to the people Eternity Eternity Eternity!” Ridley preached.
This was Stace’s lightening bulb moment; one that would turn him in to a Sydney icon.
He said the word was ringing in his ears as he left the church.
“Suddenly I began crying and 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 said.
ARTHUR STACE'S LIFE ON FILM
“The funny thing is that before I wrote it I could hardly write my own name.”
“I had no schooling and I couldn’t have spelled ‘Eternity’ for a hundred quid.
“But it came out smooth in a beautiful copperplate script.”
To this day it remains unresolved how a self-confessed illiterate man could write the word with such exquisite penmanship.
Copperplate is designed on calligraphic handwriting favoured by engravers who carved the swirling font onto copper plates.
Yet Stace insisted he could barely scrawl his own name.
He told a reporter at the Daily Telegraph in June 1965 he “couldn’t understand it” and “still can’t.”
POET DOUGLAS STEWARTS TOUCHING EULOGY FOR HIM:
No, it must come like moonlight or like frost
To wake the wicked and redeem the lost
Like a white feather in the dawn wind blowing
Perfect and white, like copperplate in chalk
And that was when Arthur State began to walk
All night he walked and most nights of the week
Treading with silent steps the silent town
Where none but drunks and wh**es were still awake
His great word burning where he wrote it down
Eternity he wrote, clear pure and pale
And underlined it with the y’s long tail
The reporter asked him at the time to show him.
“He stopped and wrote his famous message on the ground,” the unnamed reporter wrote.
“His hand flowed and the chalk line snaked our in rich curves and flourishes.”
“Then he wrote “Arthur”. It was almost unreadable.
“He wrote “rose” and this was worse.
“I’ve tried and tried but ‘eternity’ is the only word that comes out in copperplate,” he told the reporter.
That interview however, conflicts with others given where he stated he added the phrases “Obey God”, “God of Sin” and “God 1st” to his arsenal.
He was a religious zealot, fanatic about “getting the message across”.
A tribute to his life's work, the word eternity, on the Sydney Harbour Bridge at the close of the new millennium fireworks display.
Stace said he only made one slight variation to his message over the years, changing the small “e” in the script to a capital “E” to stop a joker who was following him around and chalking an “M” in front of “eternity”.
At 81, he was interviewed by the Daily Telegraph on winding down his campaign as he admitted he was “on his way out”.
During the interview he repeatedly touched a blue stain on his lower lip. “That comes from the metho getting under the skin” he said.
Arthur Stace was 83 when he died in Hammondville Nursing Home- a miracle considering his malnourished childhood and booze-soaked adulthood.
His death was mourned by the city, so much so, the two leading daily newspapers splashed his obituary on the front page.
But the man, like his moniker, lives on in many forms.
His grave, pictured below, is inscribed with one of the last few examples of his perfect copperplate penmanship.
His inspiration has, in turn, inspired countless others over the last half-century.
There’s an opera, a feature film, a documentary, poems, and essays.
His iconic script also lit up the Sydney Harbour Bridge during the 2000 New Year’s Eve celebrations. The man had chalked his way into the history of Sydney.
SOURCE
Photo & Info » The Daily Telgraph
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