*Ø* Blogmanac July 30, 1967 | Arthur Stace passes into Eternity


The greatest graffitist



Every morning for 37 years, Sydneysiders, as those who live in Sydney are called, awoke to a word that helped in unknown ways to give a focus on the deep meanings of life, death, and meaning itself.

Arthur Stace died on July 30, 1967, aged 83. He had been ‘born again’ at St Barnabas's Church of England, Broadway, Sydney, in August 1930, and his friends described him as a very colourful character. He had been a methylated spirits-drinking, hopeless alcoholic and derelict in the streets of Sydney, when he was converted to Christianity at about 46 years of age. He had returned from World War One shell-shocked and soon became a scout for brothels, a petty criminal, and a ‘cockatoo’ (lookout) for two-up schools (illegal gambling rooms where the Australian game of two-up is played).

Just after his conversion to Christianity, Stace heard the evangelist John Ridley at the Burton Street Baptist Church preach about a man who was converted in Scotland through ‘Eternity’ being written on a footpath. Ridley cried out ‘Oh for someone to write Eternity on the footpaths of Sydney!’ Arthur Stace said to himself, ‘Here is something I can do for God.’ He did so, writing the word half a million times over nearly four decades.

The pedestrians of Sydney saw this one word sermon every morning for 37 years, its origin a mystery for most of that time. When the yellow Eternity vanished from our city streets, something vanished with it.

This is an abridged verion of the article here