Travel
- 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
- 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
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.
Drove the 90 minutes from Exmouth to photograph the sunset in Coral Bay this afternoon and also see the couple I’m marrying this weekend, and after the sun had set I found that all the local restaurants all had 90 minute waits, so I thought, I could just drive back to Exmouth for dinner.
Alas, everything in Exmouth was closed, not even a vending machine for a chocolate.
So I present to you my art from today, art quite literally made by a starving artist.
Also, regional Australia, let’s have at least one kitchen open past 8pm hey?
Luckily today is the first day back from holidays for The Short Order, so I was blessed to receive a 5:30am breaky burger for dinner.
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:
I walked out of the house this morning and a man was urinating onto the street, facing in my direction, two metres away. I called out that he was disgusting and he stared at me in the eyes.
After riding a scooter across town to a store I walked upon a lady on the street bent over and attending to her monthly needs.
Just now walking to the grocery store I witnessed a man with both hands amputated smoking a cigarette, his two arms acting as two fingers.
The Parisians have really left their mark on me today.
After two months in London, across regional Austria, Liechtenstein, regional Italy, Puglia, and Tuscany, it is so refreshing for my soul to be walking the streets of Paris again tonight.
I could walk the streets of Paris and New York City for the rest of my days and never get bored or lose inspiration.
Driving from Siena, Italy, to Graz, Austria, today Goldie and I were looking for somewhere to stop for lunch and we decided on this place named after a beach in Los Angeles.
I took Britt’s Fuji X-S10 with the 27mm f/2.8 for a play while we were there.
✈️ Flighty 3 is a private frequent flyers social network!
📷🇮🇹 Our last Monday in Puglia
A birds eye view of Martina Franca, in southern Puglia, where we’ve been hanging out this month.
In these photos, happening at the same time, is a funeral procession, a dance contest, and an opera, amongst whatever else the 49,000 residents are getting up to.
There’s also two 360 photos of Martina Franca in this embed, a higher and lower shot, look for the hotspots when you’re scrolling around.
📷🇮🇹🚁 Fifteen of Monopoli’s best from my Mavic in Puglia yesterday
⛪️ I did it, I finally did it. I crucified the sun.
… and other photos from the sunset over Monopoli, Puglia, this afternoon 📷🌇🇮🇹
📷🇮🇹🏖️ 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.
🗺️ Where’s Josh’o? An update
📷🇮🇹 40 degrees celsius today in Martina Franca, but the second you step into the shade the temperature drops about fifteen of those bad boy degrees.
📷🇮🇹 Alberobello, Puglia
📷🇮🇹 Polignano a Mare, Puglia
📷🇮🇹 Sunday frames from Martina Franca, Puglia, Italy
🏖️ Tuesday at Spiaggia Lido Silvana, Puglia, Italy
Temple of Valadier: Refuge for sinners
Rate my desk (June 2023 edition)
It’s normally pretty hard to try and fit an entire nation in one photo. It’s a little bit easier if you’re making a 360 panoramic photo. But still, most nations don’t fit.
So I can proudly say I think I got almost all of Liechtenstein in this photo.
I have a confession to make.
I didn’t know “The Alps” were a thing. I thought people referred to “the alps” when they referred to alpine areas.
This probably explains why I nerded out pretty hard when I got to the Alps and kept on typing the alps and all my computing devices would autocorrect to The Alps.
Anyway, here’s a 360 photo of a part of the Alps from Kufstein in Austria.
And another from Lake Wolfgang
Lichtenstein 3D
Watched the sun set into Germany across the German/Austrian border tonight.
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
My favourite thing to do in the big cities of the world is to ignore the must-do lists, the must-see places, the hotspots and the icons, and to just walk around and exist in a different big city. Walking down random streets, getting bad coffee at little-known cafes, and finding the unseen parts of a city. The towers, cathedrals, arches and museums are cool and we inevitably end up there. But there’s something really interesting to me about experiencing another people’s normal.
My review and photos of the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport
📷🇲🇽 Analog (#mbmar Micro Blog March photo challenge prompt suggested by @skarjune)
I made these photos on Playa Cerritos, Baja California Sur, Mexico, on a broken film camera a week ago, then a few days later they were developed in a photo lab at Currumbin Beach, Australia, and I’m posting them today from Las Tunas, Mexico. The wonders of living in a connected world. (Britt has flown back to Australia this week).
July: great at selling luggage, not great at supporting it
Rancho Gaspareño
📷🚁🇲🇽 Four aerial frames from Playa Los Cerritos, Baja California Sur
Sunday // Playa Cerritos, BCS
To celebrate Britt’s birthday we took a walking food tour of Coyoacán in Mexico City with Sabores Mexico Food Tours. 10 points to our guide, Enya, for an excellent tour and secretly arranging a little birthday treat for Britt.
My friend Jay has made a really beautiful documentary about being a digital nomad, remote working around the Arctic Circle.
Old mate out on the back fence of our Airbnb in Nashville this morning is a bit cold.
A week in Tasmania
This is Noah Sushi in Pescadero. The best sushi I have ever tasted, and I’ve had good sushi, even in Japan. It’s on a dirt road, with no signage, and no fancy tables inside. People come from hundreds of kilometres around to enjoy it.
Baja is wild.
Street names in Baja are wild, in that they barely exist. To prove my residence/address I need to show an electrical bill. So this street a few blocks from our house is hilariously named.
It’s named after a gardener who still lives in that street, and drinks multiple litres of alcohol a day. His nick name is “Litre” or in Spanish “Litro”. So a gringo who loves him had a street sign made, attached to the pole at the start of the street, now everyone calls it Litro Street.
Just a boy and his favourite seventy to two-hundred millimetres of glass photographed by another boy and his medium format film camera, Jack Fitz at Playa Los Cerritos at sunset.
Teaching the Withers girls how to share margaritas
We're off to Mexico and how we can stay in contact, a manifesto
Why so dramatic, Rockhampton sunrise?
Qantas T80 seat selection reminder shortcut for Apple Shortcuts
If I was going to make a travel vlog this week my episode would be about how you should just stay at home again, airports are terrible, it’s quicker to walk. All hail HRH Lord Joyce, the decider of all airborne transport matters.
Formally: Todays flight issues involved a B717 being ill, and then Rockhampton’s Air Traffic Control being unstaffed until 9:30am so we have to wait in Brisbane until there’s air traffic control.
Time to get off the hamster wheel: interview with Spencer Howson
My mate Jay has made a documentary about remote knowledge workers, digital nomads, working around the Arctic Circle and I’m pretty damn jealous of those landscapes, the visuals, and the lifestyle! Check out the trailer!
Answers to the 10 most common questions people ask about us moving to Mexico
Watching Melbourne wake up this morning from the Maribyrnong River
Show me a more Australian meal than a Chicken Schnitzel shaped like mainland Australia, served with veges, chips, and gravy.
I’ll wait.
We brought a Peugeot to a V8 fight …
Little bit morbid there, Apple Photos
Day one of Baby Drone making photos and we’re back into lockdown because of fear of getting wet.
Watching this wombat sleep today reminded me that the wombat is my spirit animal
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.
With many of us grounded, has anyone had a play of PC Globe to try and scratch that travel itch? You might need to upgrade to a 486 to run it well.
Money shot
Turns out the TARDIS gets it’s time travelling power from books. Important lesson for us all to learn, ya know?
Calling all true crime podcasters, I’m desperate to know the story of Henk and Lane and how the small Tasmanian town of Penguin got two IGA supermarkets next to each other.
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
So it sounds like MONA is celebrating being open again, this is the view from Dodges Ferry.
Nothing to see here, just an Independence Day-alien-ship-style laser beam going into Hobart …
Dodges Ferry.
With a fake sunset.
This is the first photo I’ve ever published with a synthetic element like a sky. But I’ve been colour-grading and removing things in the edit for years, and somehow this feels worse.
Who knows?
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
Shop inside a regional Tasmanian town’s local shopping centre. The professional life coach on staff on Christmas Eve is wearing knock-off AirPods.
I could watch this YouTube channel all night long
Aircraft doing hard time
Feels good to be back, standing outside the Gold Coast Qantas Club with a bunch of other members moments before it opens, as each new person who would imagine the lounge to be open by now, stridently - almost aggressively - walks past the congregation, gets to the automatic sliding door and their face sinks as it doesn’t open.
It’s been nine months, I miss you Qantas frequent flyers, you bring me joy.
Parking lot
Today’s office: Byron Bay Airport.
🌉
Sunset over what we call Summer Bay, despite the map saying Palm Beach.
One of my oddest hobbies is cloud watching. I can spend whole flights just staring out the window. These are some odd clouds over Scott’s Head this afternoon. I probably should read a book on clouds so I can give a better descriptor other than “clouds”.
Happy 100 year birthday, Qantas
Which country do you think this photo was made in?
9 hours in Tokyo, November 2019
Six years ago, on this day in 2014, I saw the most and best American thing outside the White House, with my own eyes. Nothing that happens in America today will trump this performance.
This is why we will never want to stop travelling
Mask fashion > mask wearing?
I think I’m the only person on the Canberra Airport free wifi network right now - I haven’t seen anyone else in the airport - because I just uploaded a 12gb 4K video to Dropbox so quickly that I’m not even sure how long it took. Maybe 3-5 minutes?!