Bernie, when did you get started in tattooing? I did my first tattoo on myself when I was 16 but it was kind of stupid so I scraped it out and thought I’d get a professional one. But it was 1980 when I really started. How did that come about? I just had a burning desire to be a tattooist. I was first aware of tattoos when I was about six and they weren’t that common in the mid-60’s. I made up my mind that I was going to get tattooed when I grew up. When I was eight, we drove home from a relative’s place late one night through Melbourne and I saw my first tattoo shop. It was the Flinders Street shop and it had a big eagle with a snake wrapped around it painted on the front window. At that time, that was the coolest thing I had ever seen. I tried to get my first tattoo at 15 but the shop got raided just as I walked around the corner. I tried again at 17 and got my first one – an eagle. It wasn’t the one I picked out but that was tattooing back then. Hey, at least it faces the right way!

For my second tattoo I went to Johnny Entwhistles’s shop in Richmond (Melbourne). Walking in, I was hit with the true tattoo shop aroma of stale cigarette smoke mingled with Dettol. It was that and the images of blood-dripping daggers stuck through skulls and screaming eagles clutching snakes on the walls that had me mesmerised. At that moment I knew – this is it, this is my life!