It is an ordinary Friday when Wollongong’s most recognisable octogenarian steps into the Mercury’s Market Street office for a not-uncommon visit to the front counter.
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William F. Wallace regards himself as a “freelance public placard reporter”.
More often, he is called Sign Man.
The owner of a seemingly unchanging beige wardrobe, he frequents busy public places to find an audience for hand-written signs bearing short, often cryptic commentary on politics, current affairs, local issues and questions of morality.
He has rebuffed the Mercury’s attempts to probe this behaviour in the past, but on Friday he has a sign he wants to draw particular attention to, so will not decline an interview, he says.
This sign is printed in Mr Wallace’s distinctive hand - mostly capitals, but with lower-case ‘i’s’ and the crosses on the ‘T’s’ falling just short of their supporting texta strokes, so they resemble crucifixes. The message is a poem.
“It’s about the Aboriginals’ unfinished business with white man – with the politicians,” he says.
Mr Wallace, 84, is sympathetic to the plight of Aboriginal people. He thinks America is full of gangsters and “wouldn’t go there for all the money in the world”, for fear of gun crime.
This is a very effective way to convey a message ... people have a chance to study it as they walk towards you.
He doesn’t understand the internet, but knows it can produce more information than any freelance public placard reporter could ever need, so supposes he should do a course on it some day.
He decries the Murdoch press and its “very biased, cynical, sarcastic and slanderous journos”. He opposes council mergers. He considers himself a Christian socialist and rails against the “deregulated capitalist system”.
He expects conflict in the Middle East will soon escalate into Armageddon and believes he has seen signs that we are living in “end times”.
He thinks Wollongong is the best city in Australia, but says it changed for the worse when council redeveloped Crown Street Mall. He expended many texta strokes on that one.
“They destroyed a beautiful mall and they put the council into debt by millions,” Mr Wallace says.
“This is a big corporation – GPT - dictating to council, because of their greed, to make a lot of money at the ratepayers’ expense.”
Mr Wallace was born in Nowra to parents who held none of the religious beliefs he would go on to find, years later, after he was recruited into a Baptist church.
His working life was spent labouring in the steelworks and driving trucks, including a stint for a company that required its drivers to make deliveries down the South Coast, then backload up to 120 railway sleepers. The work took its toll, years later.
“There were no forklifts; I lay the sleepers with my hands,” Mr Wallace said.
“See, when you’re young and you’ve got a bit of strength in you, you don’t know your limitations. It wore my joints out. That’s why I’m on a walker to help me get along.”
Mr Wallace, of Warrawong, has been writing signs for 30 years. He used to hold them up but, after two hip operations his walker has become his preferred sign-holding mechanism. It’s a mode of self-expression that works better than any letter to the editor, he says.
“This is a very effective way to convey a message because when you make it brief and to the point, people have a chance to study it as they walk towards you," he says.
“They memorise a few words and they go home and probably discuss it with their friends in the clubs or whatever.”
Each sign is displayed for about two weeks - three if it is especially important. The used ones are given to Mr Wallace’s nephew. He has no family of his own, but a close friend who “keeps a check on me”. He will not elaborate on these subjects.
“You’re getting a bit personal now,” he tells the Mercury.
“You sound like a private detective.”
He is a private man really, he says. Despite all signs to the contrary.