00:00But where I want to start this conversation, Josiah, is your upbringing in Australia.
00:05Can you just give us a bit of a backstory of how you ended up in the States
00:09and really just your upbringing and playing golf in Australia?
00:12So interested in this.
00:14Yeah, absolutely.
00:15It's kind of a long story.
00:16Well, let's get it.
00:17Let's get it.
00:18Yeah, so I was born on the Sunshine Coast, which is right next to Brisbane,
00:22Australia on the East Coast.
00:24Just spent two years there before my family moved to Mount Isa.
00:28I was on the eldest.
00:29Who is that?
00:30Where is that?
00:31So that's in the middle of nowhere, basically.
00:33Is it?
00:33Because everybody lives on the coastline of Australia.
00:37So where exactly is it?
00:39Basically, the middle of the red dirt.
00:41If you go 20 hours drive northwest from Brisbane, and it's a mining town.
00:49I think they did, from memory, silver and lead, mainly.
00:52A lot of lead.
00:54And my dad took a job with the city council there, and we spent seven years there.
01:00What?
01:00It's actually, yeah, kind of crazy.
01:03Is there any golf courses there?
01:06There was not any golf courses.
01:07Well, there was one, but it was like, red dirt was the fairway.
01:11Stop.
01:12I didn't, I wasn't playing golf or anything.
01:14I played everything else you could think of.
01:17Uh, and then when I was nine, my dad decided to go do the PGA traineeship for, like, to become
01:26a PGA pro up in the Gold Coast.
01:29Uh, so by then, I had had, we had all four of my youngest siblings.
01:33So five kids, two parents, we trekked our way up to the Gold Coast.
01:37And dad spent two years there in the internship.
01:41Uh, still didn't play golf there.
01:43Actually, my first experience, probably, like, officially with golf was my 11th birthday.
01:49Uh, we went out and just played, like, night golf, par three course.
01:53And then right after that, we moved over to Perth, uh, for dad to take a job there after he
01:58completed his internship.
02:01And then spent seven years over in Perth, first about a year of it playing baseball.
02:07Wow.
02:07And, and it was just way too much travel and time and money to play baseball.
02:13Dad was in golf.
02:14I could get some free golf books.
02:16I was like, all right, I'll give it a try.
02:18Wow.
02:18Uh, so I picked up golf at, like, 12, um, like, roughly, and then probably started actually playing around 14.
02:26Wow.
02:26Devoted, devoting a little bit of time to it.
02:28Uh, spent three years over there, kind of through COVID.
02:32So, me and actually Aldrich Potgieta grew up together.
02:37That's right, because he spent some time there before he went to South Africa.
02:39We were about, we were about 25, 30 minutes away from each other.
02:42Cool.
02:43And he moved to South Africa about a month and a half after I moved out, uh, over to the
02:48States.
02:48So, basically, when COVID was getting really bad.
02:51Yeah.
02:51Both of my families decided, like, yeah, time to kind of get out of here and make sure we can
02:57just,
02:58we couldn't travel anywhere or anything like that.
03:01So, and when COVID hit, uh, dad was working at a golf club.
03:05He had had been for the seven years we were there in Perth.
03:08Um, and he was just out left.
03:11We, I think it was like early October.
03:15Our parents, like, called us in the, like, you know, like, just all the kids in the room, like, hey,
03:20like,
03:21two months, we're moving to America for good, so pack whatever you like.
03:24Oh, my gosh.
03:25And so, we took a, took a cardboard box, taped it together, and my golf clubs, and we moved over.
03:32And actually made our way to Prattville, Alabama, which is about an hour, hour west of Auburn,
03:40where my great-grandma was.
03:41Stayed with her for a couple of months.
03:43Um, and then dad got a job at the RTJ Capitol Hill.
03:47He's the director of instruction there now.
03:50Played a season of high school basketball with my brother.
03:54Wait, what, what high school did you go to?
03:56Uh, played for Stanhope Elmore.
03:58Yeah, okay.
03:59All right.
03:59Kind of like online school, because it was kind of weird how we had to transfer credits over from Australia
04:03and stuff.
04:04I feel like you could dunk.
04:05I just have a pretty.
04:06My brother can.
04:07I can't.
04:08You can, couldn't.
04:08All right, you're like me, you could touch net.
04:12I've got, I've got, I've got rim.
04:12I can, I can grade, like, I can touch rim fine and everything, but my brother's got the hops.
04:17He's good.
04:18I was just alone for the ride.
04:20Wow.
04:20But yeah, it's like a season of basketball while it was in the winter.
04:23Um, and then, so we moved in November.
04:26Mm-hmm.
04:27And then I committed to Auburn by February.
04:30And then, so we moved in November.
04:30.
04:30.
04:30.
04:30.
04:30.
