Across 362 pages, Wall Stories traverses 40 years of the city’s graffiti history – pulling back the curtain on the mysterious art form and committing to written history what is often reduced to urban legend.

Bailer immortalises attention-grabbing photos and tales from more than 100 notable figures in Melbourne’s street art and graffiti scene from the past 40 years. The book puts on record some of the truly wild stories behind dozens of distinct pieces sprayed on the city’s walls, bridges, trainlines – and occasionally places you’d never expected somebody to graffiti.

Bailer’s origin story is like that of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, in that it all began in an underground drainpipe. While hanging at the skate park with a group of his mates – and discovering he had no talent on the board – he decided to explore the nearby stormwater drain.

“We were in grade three or four, just popping up out of manholes and stuff,” he tells Broadsheet. “It was like a graffiti gallery plastered with piece after piece after piece. There’s like 40 years of layers of paint.”