Inner Peace, Outer Power: How Freesurfer Holly Wawn Found Her Flow

“Look at his legs,” Holly says, placing her frothy cappuccino on the café table as she bends down to grab Hobie’s front legs. “I mean just look at ‘em – perfectly proportioned.” 

The young golden retriever placidly accepts the compliment, panting softly as Holly lifts each limb, admiring them the same way one might adoringly exhibit the rails of a freshly shaped surfboard. 

“Handsome boy this one,” she says, patting his head and returning to her seat to devour her almond croissant. We – myself, filmmaker Hunter Martinez (and Hobie’s parental guardian), Australian surfer Beau Cram, and Emocean founder Thembi Hanify – nod unanimously and smile. Hobie is quite the specimen, but it’s what appears to be Holly’s preference for man’s best friend over, frankly, humans themselves, that is so amusing. 

A self-described extrovert, Holly’s good-natured, moth-to-a-social-flame quality is irresistibly endearing, yet in meeting her for the first time, it’s challenging to break through her top layer of pervading bubbliness. That might sound like a bad thing. It isn’t. But I’m curious to learn what’s beneath the shimmering surface of this 24-year-old Australian freesurfer emerging in her professional career, and what her presence means to the ever-unfolding mythology of surf culture – that is, if she’ll let me in. 

It’s a windy winter day at the beach in Ventura, California with a high pressure system pushing through. There isn’t a speck of cloud coverage and the sun’s rays burn with added intensity in such thin air. We squint to protect our eyes from the onslaught of offshore Santa Ana winds, which suck every drop of moisture from our skin and pelt grains of sand against our faces. 

There are waves today. West swell. The Vans team is on the hunt for their private piece of coastline to show off why they’ve earned those stickers on their boards. Holly, the only woman in the group, moves more slowly, lamenting that she didn’t leave her wetsuit out to dry and now must endure the unspeakable torture of sliding into cold, salt-encrusted neoprene in 20-knot winds. As the boys race down to the water’s edge, Holly is on her own agenda, taking her time back at the minivan. 

This carefree, nonchalant attitude contradicts the footage I’ve seen of her ferocious appetite for charging heavier waves. She cuts deep lines with a whoosh, carves sharp cutbacks with a snap, and tosses buckets with a splash, provoking not only a rich vocabulary of onomatopoeia, but a show-stopping performance.

“Oh my god, look at this girl — she’s absolutely ripping!” 

Tom Carroll, two-time ASP World Champion and 1987 Pipe Master, recounts his earliest memory of Holly. It was fifteen years ago on a hot summer day in Avalon Beach, Australia. Tom stepped outside to check the waves and saw a young girl shredding a right-hand bowl. He remembers it like yesterday.

“When I realized it was Holly — Bill’s kid, it struck me very clearly that she’s got her old man’s talent. So much power for such a small person. She looked like she was having a total ball. Like it was all effortless.” 

Holly is the youngest of three daughters to father Bill Wawn, a quintessential character of Newport Beach in Australia. He’s made a reputation for himself as a charger, painter, sailor, and a man who unapologetically likes to drink beer, talk shit, and surf. Holly’s inception thrust her in the nexus of greats like Tom Carroll, Derrick Hynd, and Mikey Wright — to name a few. 

“We call Bill the Mayor of Newport.” Tom continues, “It’s funny that we both had three girls. We joke that we are female making factories of sorts.”

Whatever factory it may be, the genetic inheritance and surf-coding coiled in the spirals of Holly’s DNA has amounted to some kind of enviable concoction of nature and nurture.

“Holly is not a typical female surfer,” Tom continues, “Very strong frame. She cuts a beautiful line. Natural feel for the power source in the wave. Each move is observed, responded to, and acted upon according to the optimum power source in the wave. She has incredible innate talent.”

Tom’s observation echoes my own: Holly’s sheer power, her low center of gravity, the impressive strength in her legs, control of her hips, and ability to throw her weight around with lethal smacks on the lip makes it seem like she’s hiding a V8-engine somewhere inside her wetsuit. It’s what people mean when they say she surfs like a guy. There’s an undeniable level of masculinity to her style — a sense she got a score to settle with the face unraveling before her.

Yet, by maintaining a coolness of expression, a smoothness in her body’s shape despite the speed of what’s collapsing behind her, flashes of femininity abound. I marvel: that the same hips that hold babies are the ones that can dance with such grace on detonating liquid mountains illustrates that surfers like Holly represent a transition from what, so far, has barely been a prologue in the history of what’s to come in women’s surfing.

“She is arguably the most powerful female surfer on the planet,” claims Beau Mitchell, her former coach and lifelong mentor. “I mean, she beat Steph Gilmore when she was 16. If the WQS (Women’s Qualifying Series) had been in different waves that illustrated what she can do, she would be in the WCT (Women’s Championship Tour) right now. No question.”

In 2019, Holly’s scores were good but the conditions the women were expected to compete in — after the boys had gobbled up the best wind and tide windows — were nothing to write home about. She felt less motivated to perform, and became indifferent to the idea of winning or losing. Something shifted inside of her. 

Holly shares, “I ended 2019 feeling like I didn’t finish as well as I should have. Then in 2020, I broke my ankle and Australia went into lockdown.” With bones in her body broken and the world around her changing, it forced physical and mental stillness, introspection, and eventually, reinvention. 

“I had heaps and heaps of time to think and I realized I wasn’t missing competition at all. I saw an opportunity to pounce on the fact that there are very few girls free surfing, hanging out, and doing what the boys get to do. I told myself, I can do that too. I can be a stand-alone freesurfer.” 

And she did. Two years later, she earned a spot with her dream sponsor, Vans. Now, with a paycheck to search for the kinds of waves she wants to surf, a crew of friends and filmers to share them with, and a sponsor with the patience of a loving parent standing on the sidelines, she has the resources to craft her unique brand image and professional identity on her own terms.

It’s been a journey, but today Holly is clear about who she is, “I’m queer, I surf, and I care about things. I just want to be who I am and not push anything or tell people what they think they should know about me. I like people to find out who I am and what I stand for by meeting me. Boys have been doing this for years and making careers from it. I’m still trying to figure out how to get a natural feel for how I put myself out into the digital space, and once I have that clear vision, it’s a relief to know Vans is there to support that.”

As Holly’s mentor Mitchell says, “It’s really remarkable what she’s achieved. She just needed to pause and find out where her feelings and intuition were pointing her, and boom, she landed right on the mark with her dream sponsor. We’re only seeing the very beginning of Holly Wawn.”

Midday in Ventura, the second spot we check grabs the west swell better and the waves are, by any measure of the word, pumping. Fellow surfer and Holly’s close friend, Beau Cram, jolts down to the beach and I pull him aside for an opportunity to ask his take on her journey. 

“It’s rare when a girl wants to chase the same waves as the guys on a surf trip but that’s why Holly is always with us.” Beau grins as he says this, pulling the memory into focus. “She lights up in heavier water and shows us what she can do. She’s got an old school style — very raw and more of a ‘90s Aussie style you saw in a lot of the guys back then. Seeing her surf J-Bay on her Bonzer for the first time blew me away.”

When I ask if there’s any footage, he says,“I’m not sure. Holly doesn’t get filmed much. I’m not sure why. I’m not sure she cares. But it’s an exposure issue and why not too many people know about her. It’s harder to get recognized in Australia. It’s crazy for us to come here, to California, and see three cameras on the beach for each surfer. No one misses a shot. But Holly surfs for herself. Since leaving contests, she’s learned not to take it too seriously. She understands that the surfers whose opinion she cares about will recognize that ability and there’s no need to prove it on the internet. She’s lucky to have that mindset but it didn’t happen overnight.”

Twenty minutes after the boys paddle out, Holly arrives with her wetsuit half-zipped, cradling her board under her arm. She waves her arms wildly overhead, cheering for her mates as they get spat out of barrels. 

Watching her moon-walk into the shore break, hollering and yelping, it’s abundantly clear that Holly lives life to the beat of her own drum. There’s an effervescence to her, a sort of floating exuberance that’s as magnetizing as it is a kind of Jedi force-field, absorbing all the things she loves and shooting off anything that doesn’t belong in her orbit.

“She is quite sensitive,” Carroll confirms. “But she protects that side of herself. Holly is someone who sees straight through things which is why competition and the idea that judges on the beach would make a subjective decision about her talent almost immediately was not for her. It takes a very powerful system of internal recalibration to do that. There are certain things, values, that are hardened inside of her. She doesn’t suffer fools and calls out bullshit. That’s rare. But on the outside, she emits joy. She is one of those girls who is happy to go out and just be who she is.”

She makes it past the shorebreak easily, and once outside, waits patiently for a wave. She sits for almost thirty minutes before I see her commit. Eagerly, I yank my telephoto lens up and lock her into focus. She wipes out. A good kind of guillotine blow to the head. I panic — hoping she’s okay. She pops up immediately, smiles, and looks back at me on the beach to confirm her vitality before paddling back out for more. 

“Every moment is a moment,” Holly tells me later, “Everything feels natural and like I’m on my own path. There is so much peace in my body.” 

After another forty-five minutes of shooting from the beach, with both my eyeballs and camera lens thoroughly eviscerated by the relentless sand storm, it’s clear by Holly’s unhurried pace that she isn’t out there to impress me or on anyone else. She’s out there for herself, waiting patiently for the right wave at the right time. It’s a silent lesson she might not even be consciously imparting, and I’m humbled by it. 

After all, Holly Wawn knows her best waves are yet to come.