This story is part of the October 11 edition of Good Weekend. See all 14 stories .

The gas people came early, in trucks, with diggers. They came to replace gas pipes and infrastructure in our old ­inner-city suburb. They came with maps to help them locate pipes (underground) and meters (often under bushes). And they left painted squiggles on roads and footpaths.

Colourful squiggles. Yellow, blue, pink, red, white, more. Sometimes only lines, figures, ­letters, mysterious symbols – or all of these ­combined in one intriguing hieroglyphic. One local with impeccable edging on his nature strip was not happy. He regarded the squiggles as low-level graffiti and pondered erasing them.

I was agnostic. As I wandered around, walking the dog or pushing a grandchild, I noticed the variety of s

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