River of ink: the visual histories embedded in tattoos of Australian service personnel

John Paterson of Ballarat, Victoria, displays tattoos from every port he has visited, as surgeon lieutenant Vic Hercus of Sydney gives him an inoculation. Photograph: Australian War Memorial

Australians who served in the Vietnam war spent much of the time in extreme heat, with their shirts off. It’s a fact Stephanie Boyle, a curator at the Australian War Memorial, was grateful for as she researched the history of tattoos in Australian service personnel.

It’s an area historians had not previously deemed worthy of consideration, Boyle says, but photographs and medical records attest to the prominence of tattoos in all conflicts since the first world war.