The wall next to Armidale Community Garden is a popular site for offenders to paint graffiti, or “graff art” or “tagging”.

Tim Behrend thought it was a legal graffiti structure, similar to that in Coffs Harbour.

So the father-of-two set to work with his spray can.

He even asked his father Dennis, who frequently walked on the reserve, on the corner of Taylor and Kentucky Streets, whether it was okay to paint on the wall and was given the nod.

But the act landed Behrend before Armidale Magistrates Court on Monday, where he was fined $350 and placed on a 12-month, good behaviour bond after pleading guilty to two graffiti-related charges.

Magistrate Mark Richardson showed some sympathy for Behrend when sentencing him.

“This is a situation where, for good reason or bad, you were led to believe by your father it would be all right to do this [paint on the wall], but of course this was wrong,” Magistrate Richardson said.

After the case, Armidale Dumaresq Council ruled out turning the wall over for legal graffiti.

“Research indicates the creation of such a wall increases the incidences of graffiti tagging on assets in the area surrounding the graffiti wall,” a Council spokeswoman said. In 2010, Council implemented a graffiti management plan, where it aimed to remove graffiti within a 48-hour timeframe.

Since then the annual cost of removing graffiti has dropped from about $69,000 to $14,000, the spokeswoman said.

But the idea of a legal graffiti wall has drawn conditional support from some.

Armidale Dumaresq councillor Chris Halligan, who studied fine arts, said it was a complicated matter that needed a coordinated approach.

“If such a graffiti wall were allowed, there would need to be peer education, where experts go into schools and teach students the opportunities with ‘graff art’ but also what is illegal in the process,” Cr Halligan said.

The police would also need to be involved and workshops provided for young people to encourage proper use of the art.

Graffiti crops up around the city at different times and places and it was difficult to predict trends, the Council spokeswoman said. Graffiti tagging was currently a problem in East Armidale.