Mr Eternity: The man who turned Sydney into his own personal canvas with a single word
During the New Year’s Eve celebrations in Sydney, Australia, in 1999, any newcomer to the city might have been particularly confused by one particular addition. Written in flowing, golden script on the side of the Sydney Harbour Bridge was one word, underlined, “Eternity”.
To those who’d called Sydney home for a long time, they knew they were looking at one of the more inspiring stories of their city, one that began with a man called Arthur Stace. Born in Redfern, New South Wales, in February 1885, Stace was not meant to live as long and prosperously as he did. The fifth child of penniless alcoholics, Stace grew up scrounging and stealing from bins for food. By the age of 12, he was working in a coal mine as an illiterate ward of the state.
He was still close with his brothers, but all that meant was that in his 20s, Stace remained on the edges of society. Working as a scout for his brothers’ gambling outfit and later, their brothels. He enlisted for the Australian military in March 1916, aged 32, before a medical discharge three years later. Stace’s 1920s were spent in similar iniquity, descending into a worsening state of alcoholism before everything changed on August 6th, 1930.
Stace had his life completely changed by a sermon from the Reverend R.B.S Hammond. Stace, previously uninterested in religion, began attending regular sermons and found himself completely invested in the idea of eternity, supported by words from another sermon by John G. Ridley. Stace found himself inspired by the words, “Eternity, Eternity, I wish that I could sound or shout that word to everyone in the streets of Sydney. You’ve got to meet it, where will you spend Eternity?”
The illiterate Stace, who could barely write his own name legibly, got the unignorable calling to write the word “eternity”, and found that, despite everything, when he tried to write the word, it came out “in a beautiful copperplate script.”
How did Stace express his love for eternity?
Not only did Stace feel he had to share the good news, but he also had this expressable urge to share it this particular way. So, he started a routine. Every morning, around 4am, he would get up and walk the streets of Sydney, chalking the only word he could write legibly anywhere he could. Footpaths, doorways, railway station entrances, literally anywhere that he could get to, typically targeting a new suburb or area of the city every day.
Stace was very much breaking the law with this project. Therefore, he had to remain completely anonymous while he did it, so he did. Every single day for the next 35 years. Sure, the Sydney local council weren’t impressed and Stace had several near misses with the law, but the denizens of Sydney loved it, whether they were religious or not. It’s telling that Stace did try to change the messaging to something more explicitly evangelic, trying to change it to “Obey God” and “God or Sin” a few times. But, they just couldn’t come out the way that “Eternity” did.
Eternity was Stace’s way of turning his life around. He worked as a janitor throughout his project, married his girlfriend and volunteered as a social worker for decades. All the while making time for early mornings spent wandering the city, spreading his message. Even after his identity was revealed, Stace never stopped the Eternity project until he physically couldn’t do it anymore. Passing away in 1967, aged 82.
It’s estimated that Stace wrote the word ‘eternity’ over half a million times in the 35 years he was active, and in doing so, he will live in the heart of Sydney for eternity.