Many started life as access routes for the erstwhile Aussie sanitary champion, the dunny-man, and his mobile treasury of fetid metal receptacles.

Lanes traditionally hosted bluestone gutters and cobbles, corrugated iron sheds, rickety wooden fences and latchkey kids kicking stones and over-sized footies. Old black and white photos show any number of bright-eyed urchins, often impoverished, swinging cricket bats, pushing billycarts and lairising about in these rough urban rat runs.

Then came reticulated sewerage, social gentrification, expensive housing renos, subdivisions, new apartments, backyard shrinkage and car parking issues. Suburban back lanes assumed a new life, much of it driven by kids shrinking away indoors into cyberspace.

But now I sense something’s changing again. Not quite sure why, maybe some odd post-pandemic thing, certainly electric bikes, but a new surge in back lane activity seems to be emerging. Around my part of the world, at least.

That’s not to say there hasn’t been plenty of mischief going on for a good while already. Think skips mysteriously loaded overnight with neighbours’ detritus, driver standoffs in purportedly one-way sections, tradies and delivery trucks merrily blocking peak-hour passage, drains blocked by home-made driveway crossovers, regurgitated offerings from nearby pub-goers, barkers’ eggs, rubbish-dumping, tradies setting up work benches on the road ….

Then there’s been the rogue chihuahua put down after attacking passing schoolgirls, murderous siblings whose screams constantly drifted over the fence into the lane, L-plate drummers and garage bands assaulting auricular orifices, raucous daily neighbourhood canine conferences and smart-alec cats on fenceposts gleefully stirring the pot.

The new lane thing includes a raft of strollers, joggers and dog-walkers – maybe something to do with all those furry Covid companions. Poodle, labradoodles, cavaliers, sausage dogs, golden retrievers, mongrels have all become local denizens.

Lots of bonhomie, people waving at one another in their cars. Nods, raised fingers on steering wheels, smiles. What the?

A swag of kids are tearing up the place with their new motorised hot-wheels soaring over junior Evil Knievel jumps, burning rubber in circlework and sneaking up at speed, silently, to spook the unsuspecting. Great sport.

Vacant lots have transmogrified into motocross courses. Even birdlife seems to have multiplied – currawongs, gang-gangs, cockies, lorikeets galore – not to mention Eastern Park’s \bats tackling fruit trees and depositing projectile acid rain all over the shop.

Possums are up and about, and demolishing my bloody mop-tops.

Tradies have basically taken up residence in the lane, on long-term reno projects costing someone a squillion. A few fences and concrete walls regularly lose chunks from supply trucks turning into the lane.

My dog nicks their lunch if they’re fool enough to leave it lying about. Scored a whole kebab one time, thought she’d won tattslotto.

Kids basketball, chalk hopscotch and general tearing about has been revived after years in abeyance. Go-karts have re-appeared, scooters, errant tennis/cricket balls are flying over fences into neighbouring back yards once again. Man-cave activity is running hot.

There has been a surge in household goods give-aways/dumping along various fence-lines – saves on tip fees, of course. Even the local lemon trees, agapanthus, liquid-ambers and gums and figs and peppercorns seem to have a new lifer and colour about them.

Thankfully, no little buggers are roaming about starkers, as has occurred a few times in the past. At least they weren’t out the front, it’s a main arterial and  another story altogether. Maybe next time …