Everything you always wanted to know about DJ Paine but were afraid to ask.
this is the first professional picture taken of me… circa late 1973…i’m around 16 months old… taken in my parents house in Miami, Gold Coast.
The Short Version:
Australian breakfast radio host with 96threeFM, podcaster & photographer. Professional christian music geek & amateur Bible nerd. Devoted husband of Benita Paine and proud of my boys: the #BrothersPaine
The Long Version:
husband of benita:
my way better half… my muse, my love, and the very blood that moves my body… i met this revolutionary young woman and her crazy south african family in 1995, in 96 i fell madly in love with her, in August 2001 we got married, and the adventure begun.
i cannot express to you how much i love her, how amazing she is and – on a daily basis – i marvel that i won the jackpot! i am truly blessed to have this person by my side.
dad of drummond jacobus paine, galvin william paine & judah joseph paine.
i love my boys more than life itself. they are a constant source of joy, laughter, amazement, pride & frustration. they will most be the most photographed human beings ever – by me at least.
i dig the fact that you can tell straight away if people like their names,
they will either say something like “great names / i LOVE their names!”
or “those names… are… different” {and you can translate “different” as “weird”}:
drummond {or “drum” for short} is the thoughtful, smart as a whip, hip older brother. he was born December 31st 2003, and is so much like benita’s younger brother {his uncle dave} it daily freaks me out. i have always wanted to name my son DRUM PAINE, i just think that the word “drum” is such a wonderfully strong sounding word, plus my father Johnny Paine was a great drummer in his prime and i loved that layer to the meaning. benita thought we should extend drum to drummond and we loved that because of the character “Mr Drummond“ – the rich dad in the 80’s TV show Different Strokes, the phrase “living phatter than mr drummond” was something we would often throw around – it is a lyric from one of my all time favourite hip-hop emcee’s Peace586 and his group Freedom Of Soul’s title track The 2nd Comin’ – we loved the old tv character & the phrase so much that benita’s afore mentioned younger brother dave took the nom de plume Mr Drummond when he started emceeing himself, which became quite prophetic because as i mentioned above drummond is almost a clone of his uncle. his middle name jacobus is benita’s father’s father’s first name plus it has a tip of the hat to both our wonderful friend Matthew Jacoby & the historical theologian
Jacobus Arminius… and to top it all off drummond’s initials are d.j.p so he has my birthright as the oldest son… there is that enough layers for you?? ha!
galvin {“galvy”} is the crazy wild yet sensitive second child. born 27th August 2006 he is so much not like his older brother, very funny and creative there is definitely a lot of my genes in there. when he turned 5 years old he decided that what he wanted to be when he grew up was a wolfman singer – exactly…. his name is my mother’s maiden name: Susanne Agnes Evelyn Galvin. Growing up my dad is an only child so there was no extended family on his side, while my mum was the only daughter with four brothers; so i grew up with pretty much all my family being galvins and we being the only family with a different last name… so much the same as Drum, Galvin was name that i had always wanted to name a son, as an honour to my mother’s side of my family and also because it sounded very strong to me GALVIN PAINE – it almost sounds like galvanized pain. William is both benita’s and my dad’s real first names.
judah has the best nick names, for example “patch”, “patchy”, “manny” & “JJ”. my littlest man was born November 15th 2008 and he has been my utter joy in my old age. Spoilt by his mother and just as stubborn as she is he is as cute as a button and is very much like his mother’s father. i think he is going to be the burliest out of all three of my sons, he definitely is the best dancer, best artist and best cook. after i named our first two sons i was out of good names so when we found out it was another boy i told benita it was all hers “just don’t go for a biblical name because the first two aren’t biblical names at all.” she named him judah joseph. two major biblical names, two key sons of abraham. judah has no family references but joseph was benita’s mother’s grandfather.
drummond, galvin & judah are all on instagram and twitter for your viewing pleasure.
follower of jesus the christ: i was raised in the “independent baptist” church scene in south east queensland, australia. for most of you, that doesn’t mean a lot, so let me give you a short definition; we are talking pretty full on fundamentalist, conservative, legalistic and traditional. the king james bible only, old hymns accompanied by an organ and piano only, rock music is of the devil… etc etc. amazingly i survived {due to my fantastically down to earth, very honest parents} and i’m sorta normal today {well not too weird}.
over the years in church i’ve run youth groups, run youth camps, went to theological college & studied the bible, taught sunday school, spoken in churches, taught in churches…. in 2005, after much prayer and prompting we decided to jump out of the boat and stop going to “church” – by that we mean we wanted to follow our Father & our Christ outside of the box of “organized religion” {whatever that means}. For those interested in some of the out of the box thinking that inspired us you can check out my friend Wayne’s work here.
In 2014 our journey brought us back into “the fold” and we now are members of a thriving local “bapti-costal” church.
born and live in Australia: the greatest country on earth. seriously. i just am very thankful to live down here. born in Brisbane, Queensland, we moved about 18 times until i was 4 {between NSW & QLD} and then grew up on the Gold Coast, Queensland. Went to Theology / Bible College in Sydney 1991 & 1992, traveled around the USA for 6 months in 1994, moved to Geelong, Victoria in 1995 and lived there for a decade. In 2005 we moved our little family back to my home town of Gold Coast. For 9 years we lived in and around the heart of the “Goldie” Southport. Early in 2014 we moved everything back down to Geelong where we currently live in the green valley suburb of Highton.
my occupation was “photographer”. ever since i can remember i have always been fascinated with light but i failed my photography class in high school though i lived in the darkroom. i accidentally shot my first wedding while traveling in Lancaster, USA in 1994. i began shooting professionally full time in 1995 and ran my own business since Jan 1st 1998. i specialised in creative photography of people. i own a LOT of cameras, my digital weapon of choice is the Canon. i still love shooting film and miss the days when i could send rolls off to the
magic fairies and get beautiful prints back… i went on “hiatus” when i photographed my final wedding in Amarillo Texas Easter 2018.
my current occupation is “radio dude”. i used to make pause mixtapes on cassette and record myself – i loved radio back in the day and since 1993 i was doing little weekly shows on different community stations. While running Mustard Records i was able to spend some time in some Australia’s radio stations – in 2017 i was very suddenly thrust in the position to do the weekly breakfast show at Australia’s biggest 100% Christian music radio station – 96three here in Geelong.
i am a music fanatic. i have hard drives full of terabytes of all sorts of musical genres. i am also deep into christian hip hop: from 1997 to 2007 i ran a little music organisation called mustard records / mustard empire with the powerful Jolane Synott. we signed some amazing artists and put some great tours. i became a sort of elder statesmen of the australian christian hip hop network, which we fostered under the banner of “In Da Midst” & then in 2006 we transitioned all of our efforts under the banner of australia’s first hip-hop church: KrossWerdz.
what else am i? i am someone who really really LOVES to connect people together. i am also a: hopelessly in love husband, loving {but strict} dad, bald & bearded, podcaster & podcast junkie, apple mac fan boy, social media baller, early adopter, movie reviewer, web junkie, extraordinary mixtape maker, visual artist, illustrator, draw-er, would be graphic designer, wanna be theologian, someone who finds it hard to throw away old magazines and all round awesome guy who would love to have a drink with you.
DJ Paine 
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