Family
- Photos on my phone: 10,017
- Days away from home: 354
- Flight hours: 87
- Airbnbs and hotel rooms: 52
- Flights: 50
- Airports: 23
- Cars (rented/borrowed/owned): 17
- Countries: 10
- Boats: 3
- Children: 2
- Eurostars: 1
- MacBooks that survived a glass of whisky being spilt on them: 0
- Brown hairs left on my head: -6
- Panic Playdate
- photocopies of passports and actual passports
- parfum
- new and identical backup sunglasses because the last place you want to be is in a strange new land without your favourite sunglasses
- octopus straps, you never know when you’ll need to strap something to something (same goes for the tape)
- USB-C dock with an ethernet port, because sometimes you just need to plug the damn thing in to get internet
- my eldest daughter’s camera (Nikon Coolpix childproof potato camera)
- my wife’s camera (Fuji X-S10 with a 27mm)
- my splurge camera purchase in Paris (Leica Z2X which means 2x zoom, film camera)
- my flying camera (DJI Mavic 3)
- my camera (Canon EOS R5)
- Native Union universal cable
- supporters gift from the Wedding Photo Hangover podcast
- DJI Mic kit
- MacBook Pro M2, a new addition to the kit after my former M1 MacBook Pro got drunk on a glass of whisky
- Philips OneBlade shaver, the best travel shaver I could find and the only one that has USB charging
- ThruNite torch that takes AA batteries because you can’t leave emergency eyesight to a lithium USB-charged battery
- 35mm f/1.8, 50mm f/1.8, 70-200mm f/2.8
- Anker charger and Britt has one too
- my friend Scotty’s latest book on my Kobo Libra 2 (I’m a recent convert away from Kindle, and love this Kobo!)
-
Every email address you have for me is wrong unless it is my name then an @ symbol then my last name, finishing with a .co … delete all other addresses from your address book or contacts app. Email remains my personal favourite place to communicate, please email whenever and whatever you like.
-
If you must instant message with, or call, me I would prefer for it to happen on iMessage or FaceTime, contacting me with the same email address. If you refuse the beauty and glory of the apple ecosystem I am unsure how we can stay in contact. WhatsApp is ugly, Telegram is full of Russian spam, none of you use the Signal app, plus it’s linked to my phone number which I’ll get to in point three.
-
My phone number will be trashed, and in the future, I’ll have other phone numbers that I’d prefer to not have to keep any longer than internet access is required. I wish to de-link myself from phone numbers in general but the world seems to think they are important.
-
Although I am often tempted to post and share on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and whatever is hot online, my heart longs for a time when we take control of the stories we read, when we personally decide what we get angry or happy about. So my contribution to this effort is to write, photograph, publish, and share on my own personal blog joshwithers.blog … there’s also a weekly digest of what’s been published there and you can get it by visiting at joshwithers.blog/subscribe to subscribe.
- When do you go? October 10, 2022, then I come back for a month’s work around Australia Nov-Dec and then I’m back in Mexico before Christmas.
- Where will you go? I’ll let you know when we get there. We’re going to float around and do some housesitting gigs and try to find our place in the country. Honestly, it might not even be Mexico in the end. The goal isn’t to go to Mexico, the goal is to leave our normal routines and life, and Mexico seemed like as good as any place to get a residency visa. But of course, we are going to Mexico and I always think of the people that move to Australia and go to Sydney, I reckon those internationals miss out. I don’t want to end up in the Sydney of Mexico, or the Surfers Paradise. I’d love to end up in the Tugun of Mexico, somewhere small and beautiful and unique.
- When will you come back? We’ll let you know when we’re back.
- How will you afford it? Please book our house, The Tugun Pause, on Airbnb … plus I’d love for my photography to mean something financially - you can buy prints at art.josh.withers.co. Also, we’re still running the Elopement Collective and also mentoring celebrants at The Celebrant Institute.
- What about the cartels? What about the snakes, spiders, crocodiles, and dropbears in Australia? Mexico is a really big nation, the whole place isn’t Narcos. I would encourage you to develop a wider view and taste of the world if you think that Mexico is all drug cartels and people smuggling.
- Why Mexico? Why not?
- What will happen to our existing businesses? We’ll still lead and operate The Elopement Collective remotely and I’m still in partnership with Sarah at The Celebrant Institute so my celebrant training and mentoring efforts will continue. Being a celebrant, that’s on ice for a season. Consider it a sabbatical.
- Why? The last two years have destroyed us. This is an effort to take back who we are, who we want to be, and what kind of childhood we want our kids to have. We’ve lost more than our accountant could count through this pandemic, and we’re still on the same hamster wheel. I tried changing the hamster wheel to real estate, but the truth is I needed to actually get off all hamster wheels.
- Will you do weddings in Mexico? I’m currently without a work visa in Mexico, so no, but I’m exploring options. Nothing will really matter until I reach my goal anyhow.
- What’s your goal, seeing as though you just mentioned it? My goal is to not know what to do tomorrow. When I don’t know what to do tomorrow, I’ll allow myself to start planning for the next season with Britt and the girls as a team.
- it has the word ‘shack’ in its name
- there are lobster pots hanging for styling
- it’s near the ocean
- it’s located at a wharf
- Chico Rolls aren’t on the menu
- there’s a grumpy fisherman on premises
Still have found what I'm looking for 🌵 Joshua Tree
When we were living in Baja California Sur a real hippy-looking bloke told me that the reason we felt so calm and at home in Baja was because it was a blue zone.
Wikipedia says of the evidence-poor but good-vibes terminology:
A blue zone is a region in the world where people are claimed to have exceptionally long lives beyond the age of 80 due to a lifestyle combining physical activity, low stress, rich social interactions, a local whole-foods diet, and low disease incidence.
I feel the same way in Joshua Tree which is why we came back this weekend after taking Luna to Disneyland and before flying home to Australia.
You might even take away from the name of this blog that I don’t mind the album either.
Disneyland for Luna’s 6th birthday. What an amazing sensory overload. A work of art!
We lost our three favourite wattle trees in the storm ☹️
One of the redeeming features of our home when we bought it was that there was a great space for a veggie garden and some animals.
So we got some help to clear the old veggie patches and to flatten it out ready for spring.
But while we were away in Queensland some big winds came through Tasmania, and although our area was one of the least affected, that wind tore three of our favourite wattle trees down.
Just missed our cute little garden shed, thank god!
Apparently wattle trees have about a twenty year expiry date and these three were ready.
A little life update: we handed the keys for our Gold Coast home back to the landlord yesterday. Today we’re home-less. I’ve just boarded a flight to Melbourne for a wedding there this weekend, then we’re off to New Zealand for a week, the. Hobart and Sydney.
What I’m trying to say is don’t post me anything.
Most of us, me included, can barely think past the next three minutes. We operate in this fear of lack, lack of good or sleep or money, that completely ignores the long arc of our life which gives us decades of evidence that we haven’t gone without yet, and all trend lines point to us being fine in the future.
That’s one of the elements of marriage I love so much.
In marriage you’re forced - by its very nature - to acknowledge that your life is far bigger than this three minute period of stress and anxiety we’re currently facing - in fact we have a whole life ahead of us, and considering that big picture, it’d be great to have someone else in it.
I’m so glad I got over myself long enough to realise that my big picture was missing you, Britt, thank you for making it so much better by simply being you.
Happy 11th anniversary xx
We’re packing and getting ready for our homeward journey tonight in Paris. We’ve got three flights left, and the longest ones just earned us a text message from Qantas letting us know that the four of us had been upgraded to business class (RIP my points balance). We’ve got a few nights in Singapore left and it’s back to the Southern Gold Coast after almost a year away.
So because I’m a big nerd, these are our family travel stats since we left home last September and listed our home on Airbnb:
Scissor me on parenting
In a story on the book ‘Welcome to Sex’, Amy Remeikis writes in The Guardian:
The response to a sex education and consent book which was removed from the shelves of Big W stores shows how far Australia still has to go on sex education, a Senate committee inquiry has heard. Welcome to Sex, co-authored by the former Dolly Doctor and adolescent health expert Dr Melissa Kang and feminist writer Yumi Stynes, became the target of an online protest campaign. The book was pulled from shelves at Big W after staff members were abused.
I’m fairly done with the constant outrage in society today, the idea that we just need to be upset all day every day. It keeps journalists employed and right wing activist social media groups active. But I will say, I don’t want Luna or Goldie to stumble across this book in a bookstore without me there to guide them.
I have a theory that the problem with modern Australian society is that continue outsourcing jobs that families, humans, friends and partners should be doing. An example is there’s a guy in a Facebook group today hiring people to be friends with disabled kids and it’s NDIS funded. We’ve outsourced friendship to the Commonwealth. Even in COVID most didn’t understand that the reasons for the lockdowns and border closures is because we have outsourced out community wellbeing to the state, so their undertaking of the ‘contract’ is to minimise expenses.
As it is with this book, it’s a vendor looking to win the contract for the outsourcing of your parenting.
My worldview is that there are matters for the home, for the community, for the family, to deal with, fix, entertain, talk about.
An example is my controversial opinion that I don’t like abortion. I have no problem with liberal/progressive abortion laws, it’s good for it to be regulated and I don’t think people are just out there aborting babies like it’s a fun pastime, but ultimately - in my utopian vision for the world - I’d like to see no abortion. Instead as someone is presented with the crossroads where they would consider an abortion the community would help. If money was required, they’d help. If the baby needed parenting, we’d help. That there would be a personalised, tailored solution, involving community and family compromise that resulted in the baby being born and being loved. I’m aware that my utopia does not exist, but that’s just where I’d like to see society be. No need to @ me, I know that rape exists, there are medical quandaries, and sex protection doesn’t always work, but I’d really simply, almost blindly stupidly just love to see babies be born and be loved. It’s like a one in 400 billion chance that a baby would ever be born, I just don’t want to squander it.
So I have my utopian vision, and it’s about communities and families taking it upon themselves to care for and love the ones within. Of course Police and governance has its place, but we should take more responsibility in the home and in the community. If I see someone litter I call them out on it, and if they’re not there I pick the rubbish up and put it in the bin, that’s me.
So, back to the book.
The main problem I see with the book is that I don’t want my girls to pick it up, if I liked the books message, I would bring it to them. But the other problem in the story today is with the linking of the book and consent. It’s a long shot. Consent is important, should be deeply known, understood and respected by all people.
Chanel Contos, the founder of Teach us Consent, echoed those concerns. “Young people are learning about sex from pornography, which – a phrase I always use is that is basically like learning how to drive a car by watching Formula One,” Contos said.
If children are learning about sex from pornography - I’ll humbly admit that was my early “education”, not due to my own wants but a severe lack of parental input and presence (thanks mum and dad, didn’t mess me up at all) - the answer isn’t to put a children’s book about sex on shelves. Sure, make it available as a resource to parents who want to engage with that resource when they are ready to, but the gaping hole in Australian society today isn’t lack of resource, it’s leadership from parents, or as I like to call it: parenting.
Australians are parenting less and less. I can talk about this from my own experience, my mother walked out when I was five, my step-mother didn’t really like me, and my father worked often two to three jobs.
A former Channel V host should not have to parent my children, I don’t want Woolworths Group to parent my children, I want close to zero of the community group that identifies as politicians to parent my children, and regardless of education choices anyone makes the educators are not parenting our kids.
Parents need to parent. Families and communities need to step up. Parents are not the kids best mates. Parents are not caregivers or landlords. Parents are leaders, leading their kids from birth to greatness - of course that greatness does include a deep and loving understanding and respect of other people’s consent, and also an understanding of the concepts of sex, intercourse, dating, courting, etc.
We have a set of boundaries with our kids that we will not lie to them, we will not lead them astray, but we’ll also respect their need to play, rest, and learn at their speed.
I’ll let them learn about scissoring when their fragile-because-of-age minds can fully understand what it means. Not when they pick it up off a shelf in a book shop next to Paw Patrol.
I welcome resources like Welcome to Sex being made available as a resource for parents to introduce to children when they deem so, but please make a space in society for parents to parent their children in their own unique way. Don’t force our hands. We don’t live in a single-speed society. Our lives have a transmission, everyone’s driving at different speeds at different revs using different gears, on different roads, needing to operate at different gears. Making a book this graphic and forward available for my child to just to pick up isn’t the way.
Create space for parents to lead their children, and maybe they will?
📷🇮🇹 Our last Monday in Puglia
Thirteen eggs, four pregnancies, six years, and two children ago
I shared this on Facebook six years ago, on July 24, 2017:
Something you probably don’t realise when you ask me to be your celebrant is that in celebrating your marriage, you’re gleaning a little from mine. As I prep for your ceremony I’m taking notes on you both and your definitions of marriage,m although the foundation of my belief of what marriage is and what it looks like in real life starts at home. So with that said, I ought share some personal news about our marriage. For almost five years Britt and I have been trying to fall pregnant, so today we took the next step and our doctor extracted 13 eggs from Britt so we could get some third party assistance in that area.
How cute is it that while you’re under general anaesthetic they scribble the extraction number on your hand like you’re tattooing your BFF with a biro in high school. Life doesn’t always go as you plan, that’s the beauty of marriage - it’s the two of you together forever regardless of how well the plan’s going, or not. And because of that union, we know, that the best is yet to come.
Here’s an update on those thirteen eggs today.
This is Luna, pitching you her idea for her new TV show. If you are a TV producer, Luna would like to sit down and talk about you buying the rights to her show.
Please, no tyre-kickers.
📷🇮🇹🚁 Fifteen of Monopoli’s best from my Mavic in Puglia yesterday
📷🇮🇹🏖️ Family day at the beach at Cala Maka. The beach is apparently/allegedly called Torre Canne Nord Prima della Casa Grigia, which translated from Italian means, North Canne Tower Before the Gray House, which is the most romantic beach name I’ve ever read.
Good luck ever naming a beach better than that.
Thought I would check on the two-year-old before going to bed …
Rate my desk (June 2023 edition)
For the past ten months, my and my family’s non-clothing and non-toiletries life has completely lived inside a Think Tank camera bag and it will do so for another 50 days. I took the opportunity this afternoon to do a quick audit, headcount, and make sure everything I was carrying was necessary, and inspired by the Hemispheric Views podcast segment ‘Rate my desk’ I thought I would submit my ‘desk away from home’ to the internets.
All of our life’s possessions that aren’t our actual home and the furniture in that home required for it to be on Airbnb, lives in our two July ‘Checked Plus’ bags, and two Dagne Dover bags, plus a Phil & Teds travel cot and a Baby Jogger travel pram, and this Think Tank Streetwalker camera bag pictured below.
The reason for the Think Tank Streetwalker bag is that it’s unique in being a carry bag, a backpack, and a roller bag. It’s the Optimus Prime of camera bags.
I’ll guess a few of the questions “What is that?!":
Our whole charging strategy is based on IEC C7 (Figure 8) leads and getting local leads wherever we go and they plug into the Anker chargers and the 96W Apple charger. There’s a blog post on my reasoning for this. I’m now a cable dad.
So, rate my desk.
Withers on film in Hawaii
Withers in Mexico.
I found an undeveloped roll of film from our time in Baja California Sur. Missing Cerritos Beach!
Withers in Paris on 35mm film
We're off to Mexico and how we can stay in contact, a manifesto
My anxiety is of the opinion that none of you really care about me, contacting me or enjoying our family travels, if that’s so, please cease reading and thank you for confirming my deepest fears and anxieties. But, if you do wish to stay in contact with me and enjoy our photos and stories of lands far away, I have four notes for you:
If you wish to engage in the same kind of blogging I am, I can highly recommend micro.blog.
I publish, photograph, write, broadcast and share online to satisfy something inside of me that wants to contribute to the fabric of our society, to the story of our generation, and this is me doing that. If you think that’s a bit weird, you’ll love my blog.
Time to get off the hamster wheel: interview with Spencer Howson
Spencer Howson on 4BC Weekends invited me into the studio to explain why we’re moving to Mexico.
Muppets magic.
“I’d save every day like a treasure and then again I would spend them with you”
Cover of Jim Croce’s ‘Time In A Bottle’ as found on The Muppets in 1977. Also, weirdly, featured alongside another Muppet in an iPhone ad for the iPhone 6S and Siri.
Finally, how I feel about Britt. Love you xx
Answers to the 10 most common questions people ask about us moving to Mexico
Answering the most common questions I’ve been asked about Britt and I moving to Mexico with our two kids:
Finally, if you’ve gotten this far you probably care about us as a family and are interested in our story. I’m fairly whelmed with the state of social media’s business models, algorithms, data abuse, and advertising these days so I’m publishing and sharing everything here on the blog first. If you’d like a weekly digest of everything shared here, throw your email into the subscribe form here. One day if enough of my community is subscribed here I might even just delete all the social media accounts.
Ekka 2022
The Withers kids hit Brisbane’s Royal Queensland Show for 2022.
All Luna wanted was a “Skye Puppy” from Paw Patrol.
Luna’s birthday week comes to a close. Now we have 51 weeks of mourning until her fourth birthday celebrations can begin.
Vale Alan James Snow
Today, Britt and I attended - remotely via live stream - the memorial service of her grandfather, Alan James Snow.
Alan’s life story is wide ranging and interesting, from his time in the NSW Police through to his large and international legacy in his family.
On the 1st of November 2013, while Alan was visiting his son in Queensland, I took the opportunity to record a podcast episode with him. I’ve always wanted to record the stories of people around us, but as often happens, time and priorities get in the way. So today, I’m proud to share this hour-long recording today with our family, and anyone else wanting to.
Goldie Grace Withers' birth
Britt and I are very pleased to introduce Goldie Grace Withers to the world. Just before 11am we were standing around the birthing centre cracking jokes, measuring and weighing everything, because Goldie was two weeks overdue, even talking about the possibility of inducing Britt. At 11am contractions started and by 12:28pm on the 2nd of March, 2021, Goldie was earthside weighing 4 kilograms and healthy as we’d hope for.
We walked into the hospital at 9:18am after dropping Luna at kindy for the day, and walked back out at 5:45pm. It was the perfect birth day.
We’re so glad that our friend Bec Zacher was there to capture it for us.
Let me introduce you to Goldie Grace Withers
No-one’s betting on a 2% chance of winning anything. If there’s a 2% chance of anything happening, that basically means the thing isn’t happening. Our doctor said there would be a 2% chance of us ever falling pregnant, and an even lower chance of us having two children.
But by God’s grace we’ve won that lottery twice now, so I’d love to introduce you to our little girl born yesterday, 4kg and healthy as you could ever hope for, please say hello to Goldie Grace Withers.
Thank you so much to our friend Bec Zacher for these amazing photos.
👩🚀 I always wanted you to go into space, mannnn (photo not by Babylon Zoo, only the caption)
We can dance if we want to. We can leave your friends behind. Cause your friends don’t dance, and if they don’t dance, well, they’re no friends of mine.
Don’t even talk to her before her morning oat milk froth.
There’s a mum sitting in the conductor’s seat of the playground train Luna wants to drive. Do I have jurisdiction here or do I have to just sit here and let her ruin my kids day?
Luna. Takes no bull.
Turns out the TARDIS gets it’s time travelling power from books. Important lesson for us all to learn, ya know?
Luna vs Kangaroo
How to spot a good fish and chip shop.
Bonus points for the shack being a seafood type of shack, for example this one is called ‘The Lobster Shack’
All I want for all of you is to enjoy life as much as Luna enjoys ice cream
Proud to be racing in the Salamanca Place to Hobart pram race today. Photographed is my First Mate taking us over the starting line.
Spending Christmas in the Switzerland of Australia’s south
Our li’l traveller
Whatever your wedding photographer is charging you, Luna will beat their packages by 10%.
Wedding has to start after her midday nap and she’ll need a never ending supply of Smarties.
I’m starting to focus on self portraits
Luna, teaching bubba to swim
🥭 ❤️
🍦❤️🐢
Two daughters and a wife
Woman, circa 2020
Poncho time
Luna’s upgraded to a big girl bed.
Please don’t tell her that a big girl bed is just a cot with a side taken off. She thinks we bought her a new bed.
All of Luna’s friends were getting orange phones so Britt and I buckled and got her an orange phone #badparents
In other audlting news today, Britt and I just fist-pumped on a baby name subject to certain condtions.
Luna and Dad’s first shakedown
I asked my friend James Day to photograph Luna and I shaking down Jake because he owes me money*. I shook him up and down hoping coins would fall out but his mum said he only uses Apple Pay now so there were no coins.
As far as shakedowns go, I’m proud of Luna and I, we brought a pretty strong game for our first one. James also made lovely photos. 5 out of 5 shakedown.
*by money I mean a cookie.
Wanna join Luna and my scooter gang? Aside from terrorising the residents of Palm Beach we also smuggle dogs across the New South Wales border.
It’s Luna’s third mango season, or as she calls it, Mangomas.
25 week mama
🌙 More attitude than a professional wrestler
It’s a rare day when you get to love animals and capitalism in the same action
Beach daze
The girl is addicted to sparkling water
She stops to wave and say hi to bush turkeys. We raised her well.
🌙
