Family

Jan 19, 2024 ∞

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.

Sep 7, 2023 ∞

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

Aug 15, 2023 ∞

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:

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

Jul 25, 2023 ∞

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?

Jul 25, 2023 ∞

📷🇮🇹 Our last Monday in Puglia

Jul 24, 2023 ∞

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.

Jul 23, 2023 ∞

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.

Jul 23, 2023 ∞

📷🇮🇹🚁 Fifteen of Monopoli’s best from my Mavic in Puglia yesterday

Jul 20, 2023 ∞

📷🇮🇹🏖️ 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.

Jul 19, 2023 ∞

Thought I would check on the two-year-old before going to bed …

Jun 30, 2023 ∞

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?!":

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!)

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.