This wicked Little Darwin scribe nearly fell out of his recliner when the busty blonde actress Sabrina made an unexpected fleeting appearance in the superb ABC TV film ,The Eternity Man .Why? Because Sabrina figured in one of the biggest let downs in my life right here in Darwin some 50 odd years ago. A callow youth , still suffering from teenage acne, I was driven to the airport, a tape measure in my pocket , to have an encounter of the close kind with Sabrina . If you get my drift, she was really big news in those days . Darwin based Melbourne Herald journalist Doug Lockwood had been tipped off that she was going to fly into Darwin from England and in a discussion at the old NT News office enlisted my help for a stunt to run the tape measure over Sabrina’s vital statistics for a photograph .
The plane arrived , I fidgeted with the tape measure , and out stepped –Sabrina’s buxom mother! Lockwood had been given a bum steer. Still, mum was a good sport , had a kind of gor’blimey accent , giggled , and apologised for not being her dazzling daughter .
The plane arrived , I fidgeted with the tape measure , and out stepped –Sabrina’s buxom mother! Lockwood had been given a bum steer. Still, mum was a good sport , had a kind of gor’blimey accent , giggled , and apologised for not being her dazzling daughter .
I sat up late to watch The Eternity Man , about reformed petty thief and alcoholic Arthur Stace who wrote Eternity in chalk on footpaths and walls all over Sydney in a bid to save sinners . As I had seen Stace going about his work when I was cadet reporter in Sydney , I was eager to see how he was treated in the unusual film of an opera originally performed in London . The film version was a tour de force capturing the seductive seediness, glitter and destructiveness of the metropolis in which Mr Eternity used graffiti for God.
Directed by Julien Temple , it was an astonishing exposition of Australian talent and because of its content , unfortunately, was run at an ungodly hour on a Sunday night meaning not many people would have seen it. In l956 the Sydney Morning Herald published a poem about Stace who had served in WW1.
Many nights he walked, and early mornings of the week,
Treading with silent steps the silent town
Where none but drunks and whores 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.
Sometime’s when midnight chimed in Martin Place
Behind the arches of the GPO
A shadow moved, but was it Arthur Stace?
Some flickering thing perhaps crept soft and low
On the dark pavement of the Opera House
But was it hands that moved there , or a mouse?
No one could say ;only one knew for certain
That there and here in unexpected places
Somewhere that night the great word had been written
And Arthur Stace once more had left his trace.
That was –Arthur Stace.
Yea and verily, it is said God moves in mysterious ways. An article about Stace in Australia’s Outback Patrol, a Christian community service to people of the outback, said that Stace was the kind of person who reminds us that when God measures a man’s greatness , he puts a tape around his heart and not his head. This is exactly what I was going to do to Sabrina at Darwin Airport.
Directed by Julien Temple , it was an astonishing exposition of Australian talent and because of its content , unfortunately, was run at an ungodly hour on a Sunday night meaning not many people would have seen it. In l956 the Sydney Morning Herald published a poem about Stace who had served in WW1.
Many nights he walked, and early mornings of the week,
Treading with silent steps the silent town
Where none but drunks and whores 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.
Sometime’s when midnight chimed in Martin Place
Behind the arches of the GPO
A shadow moved, but was it Arthur Stace?
Some flickering thing perhaps crept soft and low
On the dark pavement of the Opera House
But was it hands that moved there , or a mouse?
No one could say ;only one knew for certain
That there and here in unexpected places
Somewhere that night the great word had been written
And Arthur Stace once more had left his trace.
That was –Arthur Stace.
Yea and verily, it is said God moves in mysterious ways. An article about Stace in Australia’s Outback Patrol, a Christian community service to people of the outback, said that Stace was the kind of person who reminds us that when God measures a man’s greatness , he puts a tape around his heart and not his head. This is exactly what I was going to do to Sabrina at Darwin Airport.
