Chalking up a legacy

Life can get busy on the farm this time of the year, so be sure to not over-cook things! It’s a rather fascinating story from me today, for this issue of Rural News.

I find it interesting to note how some are deemed to have contributed so much to their particular sport, they have duly been accorded the honorary title of “Mr” – like “Mr Cricket”, “Mr Golf”, or “Mr Tennis”. I read something in the media recently where former Aussie Test player Mike Hussey was referred to as “Mr Cricket”.

One of our own, the late Winston McCarthy was not only known as “The Voice of NZ Rugby”, but also by others as “Mr Rugby”. McCarthy had been a unique radio voice for rugby through the 1940s and 50s, with his last broadcast being the Lions final test of their 1959 NZ tour.

I understand how someone can earn that accolade with sport … I get that! But how about “Mr. Eternity”? How in the world would a person ever get given a title like that? Surely it would have to be, at the very least, a male equivalent of someone like Mother Teresa? Or perhaps a man widely-known and loved internationally, for all his lifetime research and work with those who have been through near death, or “out of body” experiences?

Nope, actually he was none of the above, not even close!

In 1884, Arthur Stace was born into poverty in Balmain, just west of central Sydney. His father, mother, two brothers and two sisters were alcoholics, his sisters were brothel operators. The family was well known to the law!

Young Arthur looked after himself, searching through rubbish bins for food, stealing bread and milk just to feed himself. He was made a ward of the state at 12 and landed his first jail time at 15. Any schooling was pretty much non-existent, Arthur struggled to even write his own name.

WW1 found him serving in France. He returned home to Aussie partially blinded in one eye, shell-shocked and suffering from the effects of poisonous gas. The future was very bleak indeed! From there, right through into the Great Depression, he slid further into alcoholism – finally drinking methylated spirits at just sixpence a bottle.

From the early 1930s, mysteriously the word “Eternity”, handwritten in chalk in elegant copperplate text, started appearing on Sydney pavements. This continued for close to 36 years. It remained a total mystery for many years; nobody had a clue who was writing it.

Of course – as you can imagine – with something like this, the media eventually jumped onto the story and helped build the intrigue.

Finally, mid-year 1956, the mystery was solved. The writer was none other than Arthur Stace. He wrote that word in chalk more than half a million times, and thus earned for himself the title “Mr. Eternity”.

So, what happened? Well, God had come to him in the early 1930s and his life was powerfully transformed. The “chains” were broken. There is no other answer!

What is perhaps more amazing still, when Sydney celebrated New Year’s Eve to welcome in the new millennium, as the smoke cleared from all the fireworks the word “Eternity” appeared up in lights on the Sydney Harbour Bridge for the world to see.

And that’s not all…

The word appeared again during the Opening Ceremony for the Sydney Olympics, September 2000.

Billions of people saw it through those two televised events. Wow, what an amazing legacy!

Keep well and God Bless.