In conversation with Holly Wawn
14/02/2024 Miica Balint and photography Adam Robertson
Hailing from Bungan beach, accessing Holly’s home break means scoring one of ten car parks that are crested atop a big hill, and then walking down a steep sloped pathway to the sea. Bungan beach is nestled between two headlands both forty to fifty metres in height, and the beach is backed by steep vegetation. The inaccessibility means crowds flock to other spots in the Northern Beaches. It really could be the best place to grow up in Sydney, let’s keep that between us.
The ninth of February marks a year of Holly living in Bangalow, she describes living in the Northern Rivers as nice, very pretty, somewhat insular and definitely weird. “It’s like highschool, everyone knows everything.” Echoing many of us, Holly loves arriving home after being abroad, explaining “I travel plenty for surf, that’s why I like living here because I come home and I’m like ‘this is the best place ever’--it’s really cool to come home to.”
Mostly funded by Vans, she has spent much of her recent time in East LA, where the opportunities for our shredder reach far further afield than just the surf-related.
“You can go anywhere and surf, but being taken somewhere because of your job and meeting people that don’t surf is much more interesting, and progress-wise it is very cool to be expanding my scope.” Since we spoke, Holly has spent time in Miami for a wedding, as well as California, Morocco and Indonesia for surf and joy.
Within the surf-related, Holly recently landed herself a feature in The Surfers Journal, issue 33.1, listed amongst ninety-nine other surfers that Derek Hynd deems to be the most engrossing wave riders at present. Yes that Derek Hynd.
You may have seen her ripping through the streets of Cali in a big GMC truck on Stab Highway California which aired in 2022. Stab Highway, inspired by Thrasher’s King of the Road, rounds up a motley crew of world-class surfers for a week of strange. Trading GMC Yukons for Volkswagen Transporters, Holly also led an Australian team in the debut of this series the year prior in New South Wales. And the pothole roads of her now-home? One of her top avocations is to take to our streets in her navy-blue landcruiser; “going for a lap” for the sake of a look.
Something you will learn about us here at Northern rip is that we like probing on seemingly trivial or puny details. I am going to rattle off some of Holly Wawn’s responses as small poems. I hope you can call them that. I apologise if my perspective or structure in what follows irks anybody, this was fun and unplanned. I concede I am literate, but not a poet.
Shit, I been cooking
Pipis, mussels, clams
Ceviche
Don’t take me fishing
I’ll stand right back
Bait reek
Fish stink
Reel it in,
hand it over
In hospital twice for blue-bottle stings
on her hands
that affected her glands
Holly’s dad
her friends call him the nut-man
a blue-bottle got him down there
A ball at a time
the size of a grapefruit
She’s been off the beers
since new years
A self-imposed beer ban
limits her visits to our pub
A cold beer
tastes best here
Come back Holly