the broken hearted?’’, or an arrow pointing to a hole, large enough for a teenage body to squeeze through to a space the size of a large broom cupboard.

‘‘Bong room’’ reads the sign, and an inspection of the dirt floor inside proves the words do not lie.

Most lettering is so jagged, so designed, that the meaning is hard to make out.

Walk along the concrete drain, perhaps 20-metres wide with a slippery creek running down the centre, through dark tunnels and you reach the railway line – another favourite location of the graffiti crews from Thirroul to Port Kembla.

A train thunders over the bridge, its coal wagons littered with grey patches where graffiti has been painted out.

She has worked with some of the big names in the Illawarra graffitisub-culture – only about 20 in the hard core – and promises to put me in touch with three of them, anonymity guaranteed. They agree to an interview, but never turn up.

Caruana is a refreshing presence, a Shellharbour youth worker who inhabits that strange space between the legal walls sanctioned by councils and the illegal tagging of trains, shops and public property.

The abandoned mansion at Dunmore, half-finished then abandoned by failed developer John Kosseris, has been a favourite haunt in the south, just as the Bulli Brickworks has attracted artists with aerosols in the north.

‘‘I am here to put art on the streets,’’ she said.

‘‘I am here to get young people to creatively contribute to their community and turn abandoned areas into works of art.’’

She reckons tagging is