Max Chater. A name known to many of us who have been into tattoos for the past couple of decades and a few before that. But the sailors, rockers and wayward souls of many gen-erations before us, spoke of “Painless” Alex Chater, Max’s father. A genuine to the bone tatt-ooist who learnt the REAL hard way and kept it up for over forty years.

Along with Max carrying on the family tradition in fine style, is Max’s son Zachary who’s been plying his trade for a few years now. Three generations of tat-tooing all in the same area of Sydney, spanning over 70 years and still going strong, now that’s a TRUE love of the art form!

Big thanks go to Josh Roelink (who’s a great and dedicated tattooist himself) for getting this interview together over many long long nights, and Big thanks to Max for enlightening us all on the family history, and also to Zachary. The article stretches over two issues because there was waaaay too much to fit in these pages, so don’t miss issue 38 as well. On with the show Josh...

Alex Chater

The chaos and mayhem that is Kings Cross. A whirlwind of neon and flashing lights, the place has long been a centre of hedonism in the relatively tolerant city of Sydney. Sailors, strippers, single somebodies, sixteen to sixty year olds, no one is out of place in “the Cross”. For many, the Cross is the place to go and have a drink and a laugh, a look at the goings-on, and also, a place to go and get tattooed.

Down a quieter and nearly insignificant laneway off the main strip is a small (and I mean SMALL) tattoo shop called Village Tattoo, but known to the locals and those that frequent the place, as Max and Pete’s. Max Chater is the godfather of the Cross tattoo scene. The oldest shop in the area, Max can still be found here working away and having a laugh every week. Forget the trendy new-age types - this is REAL tattooing in it’s rawest form; simple and true. Max has been tattooing around Sydney since the fifties, and we decided it was time to find out a little more about the Chater family legacy.

Les Green - tattoos by Alex & Max Chater

Max: You look more nervous than I do.
Josh: I am, I am... this is the first time I’ve used one of these things, bloody new fangled techno tape recorder (laughter).

J: So Max. What’s your first memory of tattooing?
M: Of a tattoo shop, my first memory is as a five year old kid, goin’ to my dad’s shop - he was at central, opposite central railway.

J: Where Tony (Cohen)’s is now?
M: Nah, much further up - right opposite the railway, near Fouveux Street and just up a little bit further. I remember going there as a kid, the highlight of me to go there was the fact that in the lane at the back of the shop there were all brothels and sly grog joints, as there were in those days.. all the pubs closed at six, and were closed on Sundays... they had sly grog shops, where you went when the pubs were shut and the guys on the door’d give you a penny, to piss off and leave ‘em alone. So you’d go instantly ‘round the back lane, where the brothels and sly groggers were, and get a penny...

J: And make a bit of money.
M: Yeah, make a bit of money and go and buy some lollies.

J: Awesome.
M: Yeah, but as far as working, I started tattooing part-time when I was fourteen, when I left school. And I’d kinda work in my dad’s shop on Thursday nights and Saturdays.

J: So he had the shop in Central for how long?
M: That’s a hard one... he started there in the thirties, yeah, early thirties, and he was there until the early fifties, when he moved to Paddington, to Oxford Street and that’s where I started.

Betty Broadbent

J: Geez, you’ve been tattooing for how long?
M: Started there in about fifty eight.

J: Over 40 years. And who did your father learn from?
M: From Chris, ol’ Chris. He was a Swedish guy... you could actually write a whole book on this dude. I tell you what mate, he was incredible - he came to Australia about 1890 as an eleven or twelve year old boy in the Swedish navy, and deserted ship in Melbourne, ‘cause the ship had run out of supplies, an’ they couldn’t get anymore up... they went to Tasmania, and the whole ship deserted. Apparently one of the guys he knocked around with on board the ship had done a lot of hand tattooing. Of course back in those days you were a man at fifteen. Firstly he just bummed around the goldfields for a few years and did a bit of this, and a bit of that an’ somewhere along the line, in the goldfields somewhere, he ran into a Chinese guy that knew how to tattoo by hand. He picked a bit up from him, an off he went on his way, eventually ended up in Sydney years later. He opened that shop down there and sort of picked up my dad as a younger guy with a bit of talent, an’ thought I’ll teach this guy, y’know, and taught him, and they worked together for well gee, many many years. Then Chris went down to Wol-longong, to Cringella, actually - Bethlehen St Cringella, yeah, I still remember the address. He had a caravan, rigged out as a tattoo studio, in the side of a house there - which Danny Robinson was doing not so long ago - yeah, similar sort of thing, only much earlier model caravan of course...

J: Probably much nicer too..
M: Yeah it was huge.. and he built it himself, the caravan, out of timber and canvas. He was incredible this guy - do anything - tattoo, carve, paint, sculpt, build...

J: Jack of all trades..
M: Ah, unbelievable. Yeah, I actually went down and worked with him for a while as a lad, y’know, and learnt a lot of things off him.
Zachary: Down in Wollongong wasn’t it Dad?
M: Yeah, down in Cringelly...
Z: And he painted all his own flash.
M: Oh yeah, unbelievable, all hand-painted with a brush, no photo-copiers back then. Didn’t use a pen - no one had invented ball point pens y’know, we were still in the days of the pen, nib and ink - dip it in and draw with it... and they were bloody horrible splattery things.

Alex Chater

J: ... do it all by hand?
M: Yeah, sit there with a little hand-drill and hand-wind your wire onto the coils - and I think at home somewhere still I’ve got the formula for it and how many wraps of what gauge wire goes on it, I think it’s a quarter of an inch, ah, pig-iron center. Yeah, everything you just did yourself... even like needles, you couldn’t just buy needles...

J: ... yeah, right...
M: ... y’know I remember as a kid, my hated job was every Monday - I had to go to every haberdasher in Sydney...

J: ... and buy up all the needles?
M: ... and buy up all the number twelve needles - if they had any... an’ you’d kinda go to one shop, and they used to sell them in little packs, like five or so in a pack, yeah, something like that. You’d go there - “oh yeah, we’ve got two packs you can have” so you’d buy them and off you’d go to the next one... up on the bloody tram or whatever, off to the next one. An’ spend a whole day and come back with, if you’d had a good day, maybe a hundred and fifty needles, or a hundred needles..

J: ... what a way to go man, I’ll bet you made those needles last.
M: ... well, it was the only way there was... there was nothing, y’know, just nothing’ available. There was no photocopiers, no stencil-machines, no hectograph paper - you made everything. We actually made our own hectograph ink, with hectograph powder and sugar, and water. An’ cooked that up, an’ you drew it on the paper to make a stencil with a post office pen - it was like bloody chewing gum - it was horrible. Then you’d have to sit the stencil on top of a heater to dry it, because of the sugar content, and mate, aw, you took care of ‘em..

Chater Tattoo Club Circa 1955

J: ... did the roaches eat it?
M: I should imagine they would of, I don’t recall having that problem, but, y’know, you’d put ‘em in a book, and you’d put a sheet of grease-proof paper between each stencil and yeah, if you used it, you’d hang it up - because there was an hour or so of work in drawing up a stencil...

J: ... so you were using like a thick tracing paper or that stiff plastic acetate, or what were you using back then?
M: Just tracing paper, thick tracing paper. Some of the guys used acetate - that was more of a Melbourne thing - they used the acetate and scratched the design in the acetate, sprinkled the carbon powder on, and lots of Vaseline and left a print that way, which was a bloody nightmare too.

J: Oh yeah, first wipe and it’s gone...
M: Yeah, it was horrible. Dickie Reynolds did that right up to the time he retired, ol’ Dick. Used the acetates even when the new style of stencils were available. Oh they were hor-rible. You had to put that much bloody Vaseline on the guy that you couldn’t get a hold of him..

Tattoos by Alex & Max Chater

J: So he’s just slippin’ and squir-ming you’re holding his arm so tight.
M: Aww, it was shocking. You did everything hard y’know, held your machine by the very end of the barrel like... had that much barrel sticking out so you didn’t touch the stencil, y’know.

J: So you did all the outline without wiping?
M: Yeah, yeah, “I got all the outline done, now I can wipe it, what a relief”.

J: Ol’ Dickie Reynold’s eh from...
M: Melbourne, Flinders Street Melbourne, upstairs, then in Bridge Road, Richmond.- I worked for a little while with him too.

Max Chater with sailor

J: Down in Melbourne or up here in Sydney?
M: No, no, down there.

J: So you worked in Melbourne?
M: I was only there for about three or four weeks. My dad was sort of one of these people - like, alright, go and work with him for a while, y’ know, see what he can show ya that I can’t.

J: That’s great...
M: ... yeah, well, info you can pick up... you pick up whatever ya can, wherever.

J: So you worked with other people as well?
M: Yeah, yeah, I worked with Dickie, and Ol’Chris mainly, I used to on and off with Chris. Mate, I had a huge amount of respect for the guy, you know... he was fantastic. A huge, tall thin guy, with bloody hands like legs of lamb, and he could do anything, just anything. Fuckin’ amazing.

Tattoos by Max Chater

J: Could he paint as well as tattoo?
M: Paint? Well, I still got a couple of his paintings at home. He actually had a painting hangin’ in Young and Jacksons Hotel in Melbourne, in Cloey (?) which was really famous at the time - it was a copy of some famous painting - of a nude which was very raucous for it’s time..
Z: I’ve got a photo of that at home. It’s one of those pre-raphaelite sort of paintings.

J: So, like a full oil painting?
M: Oh yeah..
Z: Yeah, life-size oil painting of this naked woman, it was a fantastic painting.
M: Ol’ Chris ya know, he was way into his nineties when he died - he was at an old seaman’s home in Mt. Kira, down near Woolongong. I don’t know whether it’s still there or not... I think he was ninety seven or something when he died.

Tattooing in the Paddington Shop