Speakers Corner - May Day

Every Sunday, in a corner of The Domain, near the Art Gallery of NSW (background), speakers with a point to make set themselves up and have a go at espousing their views. This fellow had about ten people sitting on the grass being mildly entertained by what he had to say.

The "Speakers Corner" idea was inherited from Hyde Park in London. Compared to its heyday in the 1930s, and then again in the 1960s, Speakers Corner is a rather pale shadow these days.

Traditionally, May Day (International Workers day) rallies ended here.

You can read more about it here.

The UFO Christ Man

People call him the "UFO Man" . One writer, Vanessa Berry, called him "the last of the sandwich-board prophets".

I used to see him in in central Sydney but for many years he has lived in a Housing Commission flat in Arncliffe, and that is where you can see him almost daily (mainly afternoons), on the footpath of one of Sydney's busiest arterial roads, the Princes Highway.

He stands pretty still - occasionally wanders back and forth a bit, or pivots to display his message to motorists from the opposite direction.

Yesterday I stopped and tried to talk to him, but what he utters is pretty incomprehensible. I don't know his name, just that he has been a fixture for many years.

His message? Isiah 66:15
"For, behold, the Lord will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire."