Tattooist to leave his mark on region

Ted Turner opened his tattoo shop in Gayndah this week.

Ted Turner sitting in his tattoo shop. Picture: Jake Finnigan

A NEW tattoo shop has opened this week in Gayndah.

Ted's Tattoos opened in the Gayndah Arcade on Capper Street on Monday July 8, but proprietor Ted Turner's links to the North Burnett stretch back more than a decade.

"When I first moved here in 2011, we'd already looked at and bought a house here in 2008, and we just thought it was a busy little town,” he said.

Mr Turner has been practising the art of tattooing across Queensland for over 30 years, and while the 60-year-old originally planted roots in Mount Isa, he feels the decision to open up the only tattoo shop in the North Burnett is a smart one.

"I started tattooing professionally in 1988,” he said.

"I spent most of my tattooing career in Mount Isa, then I went to Nanango for about three years, and was in Chinchilla for about 8 months,” he said.

"I'm not originally from Mount Isa, but I called it home because once I left school, I worked around the district for most of my working life,” he said

"Gayndah is supposed to service an area of 35,000 people, so we thought we'd get a little bit of business out of it,” he said.

When asked what his favourite part of the job was, the tattooist said pleasing the customer was what kept him going.

"I was asked this question by a customer once, and I sort of didn't answer, it wasn't until he got up and actually looked at his tattoo in the mirror that I realised that it's actually doing something that someone is really happy with,” Mr Turner said.

"It's an art-form too, and that's what I like, is doing art,” he added.

Mr Turner couldn't pin down which tattoo he'd completed that was his favourite, but said he always did his absolute best work with every sitting.

"I couldn't say, really, they're all my favourites, you do the best you can on every tattoo,” he said.

"If you talk about yourself, your favourite tattoo is always the last one you got,” he said.