Slab To The Heart

T HE NE X T B E S T T HING T O L E S L IE

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F E RUA RY 2 0 1 3 IS S UE 509 PARKO, FINAL LY ON T HE T HRONE. PHOT O: NAT E SMIT H

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H OW A S E M I - TA L E N T E D K I D F R O M M A R O U B R A F O R G E D O N E O F S U R F I N G ’ S M O S T U N I Q U E C A R E E R S . WORDS BY BEN MONDY

In 2001 Tracks dropped Mark Mathews into the path of a new wave called Shipsterns and into the glare of the surfing limelight. Prior to that he was just another kid from Maroubra, albeit one surfing under the hard charging wing of Koby Abberton. Since those two days at Shipsterns over a decade ago, Mathews has forged a career as one of the craziest slab hunters in surfing. What you might have seen is a continuous loop of images featuring Mark standing tall under the axe of mutants lips at Shippies, Ours, The Right in WA and in Hawaii. His fearless approach has seen him make a career out of what, by his own admission, is simply taking off on waves that no one else wants.

What you might not know though is that in his spare time he has been instrumental in the making of a world wide cinema released feature film, has a new TV show airing in 2013, moonlights as a corporate speaker and has found himself as the most public surfing figurehead for a Bra Boy image that is becoming increasingly hard to define.

From tending bars as an 18-year-old to now hanging with Anthony Kiedis, entertaining hedge fund managers in Hong Kong and doing red carpet tours of Eastern Europe, there’s a lot more to Mark Mathews than a guy that simply charges big waves. His is a story of hard work and real smarts, one that hasn’t been properly told and one that is nowhere near finished just yet. Tracks talks to Mark Mathews and lets him in his own words explain a career that is as individual as it is inspirational.

HARD WORK AND DEDICATION ARE THE TWO BIGGEST BOWS IN MARK MATHEWS’ QUIVER, WELL APART FROM THE ONE HE’S HOLDING IN THIS SHOT. NATESMITHPHOTO.COM

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“... I WAS NEVER THAT GOOD. I MEAN I’M NOT THAT GOOD NOW TO BE HONEST (LAUGHS). I’VE JUST MADE A CAREER FROM TAKING OFF ON WAVES THAT OTHER PEOPLE DON’T WANT TO TAKE OFF ON ...”

Let’s start at the very beginning. Tell us a bit about your background.

My dad was a surgeon, who grew up in Maroubra. He was a surfer but stopped when he studied medicine, and then took it back up when I was old enough to learn to surf. My mother is Dutch and met my dad in an Austrian ski field when he was working there. I used to be really scared of big waves when I was young and my mum would have to come and rescue me when I was stuck out the back - pretty embarrassing really. I also have an older sister, she is a teacher and runs a school in China.

Did you grow up in the same house in Maroubra? Yeah, up until I was 16, when my parents split. Dad moved to Queensland and I moved in with my mum in a new house down on the beach that was next door to the Abbertons. And pretty much from that point I spent every day with Koby surfing, training and travelling. We became as thick as thieves.

Did you have much to do with him before you moved in next door?

Not really, I’d see him around and surfing, but I wasn’t close and didn’t hang with him at all.

That must have been a big change, your folks splitting and moving in next door to Koby. Yeah it was a big change, especially for my surfing.

Family-wise I didn’t lose much at all. I was still really close with both my parents and it wasn’t that much of a bad break up. For my surfing though, spending that much time surfing and travelling with Kobe, it was a huge step up. I went from never surfing anything remotely big and being absolutely scared of big waves to going around the world trying to surf the heaviest waves we could find.

Did you have any real talent as a surfer at that age? No, I was never especially talented as a kid. There were loads of kids at Maroubra that would beat me in the boardriders, plus I was playing a lot of footy and missing comps as well. So I was never that good. I mean I’m not that good now to be honest (laughs). I’ve just made a career from taking off on waves that other people don’t want to take off on.

Your first real introduction to the surfing world came with that first trip to Shipsterns for Tracks back in 2001. Run us through that. It’s pretty funny, because that was my first-ever magazine trip and the only reason I was there was because Koby dragged me along. At the time there had been these rumours and whispers about this secret monster wave down in Tassie. There was a little bit of footage around, I think of Rasta and Andy Campbell, and it looked so mental and so heavy. So I was shitting myself going down there because I’d never ever surfed anything like that before. Plus it was my first-ever magazine trip and I knew if I ever was going to be a pro surfer then it was going to be by surfing crazy waves like this.

I was working at Tracks at the time and we didn’t have a clue who you were. Koby just informed us you were going, and that was that. Yeah

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and then Koby bailed! It had been really stormy and shitty for a few days and there was a cyclone up in Queensland, so he booked a flight and just left me there. Then Kieren Perrow turned up, who I’d never met. We were sharing a room and I was like, “Wow this guy is the biggest dork I’ve ever met.” Everything he owned was neatly folded and in a row and I had absolutely no idea that this dork was the biggest charger in surfing.

So when we surfed it and he started taking off on these monster sets, I decided I better keep up with this dork or I’m going nowhere in surfing.

So I just followed his lead.

What are you memories from that session? The clearest thing I can remember from that surf is one wave. Around that time the Kelly Slater PlayStation game had just come out where you could get a point of view footage riding the hugest waves that didn’t even look remotely real.

I remember getting a barrel out at Shippies and that thought flashed through my head. It looked exactly like that game and I was blown away.

At the time did you realise the impact it might have? Probably not till we saw the photos. It was film back then, so it took about a week before we could check them out. That night Davey (the photographer Sean Davey) was saying, “You guys are going to be stars. That was the craziest shit I’ve ever seen.” We were like yeah whatever Davey. And then we saw the photos and I couldn’t believe what we had ridden.

How did it impact your surfing? The biggest thing was that I was hooked.

I went from being really scared of big waves to taking the biggest leap you could take in surfing at the time. After that I couldn’t even find waves that were that big and could scare me. So it was like going through the whole process of learning how to surf big waves in one trip. I’d go to the Box or some other slab and they were just so tame in comparison. It was just a massive jump-start. Then off the back off the exposure I got sponsored and was getting paid pretty good money. Prior to that I was working bars, so I could quit that and just chase waves.

You also had a crack at the QS? I did the QS a few years in a row, but I knew my sponsors were paying me to get footage like the Shippies stuff and that was my main focus. I’d spend the whole winter in heavy waves like that, not even riding a shortboard, and then I’d fly to France for a comp and understandably get absolutely annihilated.

What kept you going? Well I had a few results, a couple of finals in shitty waves and then I’d always get a result at Pipe, so it was just enough to keep me doing it and I always wanted to do the Hawaii events. I knew pretty early on though that the chances of qualifying for the CT were slim to none. Plus nothing on the WQS, no matter what result, came even close to the feeling I had got in Tassie.

So you went back to chasing big waves? Yeah. At the time I was lucky I was travelling with Kobe. Back then he was real smart about his surfing

OPPOSITE TOP: YOU’RE NEVER MORE COMFORTABLE THAN WHEN YOU ARE AT HOME, EVEN IF THAT HOME IS SCARY AS SHIT. POISE UNDER THE AXE AT OURS. NATESMITHPHOTO.COM BOTTOM: WHAT GETS YOU OUT OF BED IN THE MORNING? MARK’S MIRROR OF MOTIVATION THAT FEATURES AMONG OTHER THINGS, A SHOT FROM ONE OF HIS HEAVIEST WAVES & WIPEOUTS AND INSPIRATIONAL FRIEND, BARNEY MILLER. NATESMITHPHOTO.COM

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and his career. He knew the companies wanted exposure and he was travelling non-stop, and there were very few guys that were doing what he was doing.

I remember at the time he was everywhere, in all the mags, covers the works. He could have been the best big wave surfer ever, for sure. He could be what Dorian is now. If he had stayed fit and didn’t have to go through the court case and all that shit. He’s that good a surfer and that talented at reading waves, he’s beyond fearless, he’s got everything.

But he got lost along the way and he got sick of the sponsorship and all the business side of things. I still reckon he could get there if he put his mind to it.

The Abberton court case probably kick-started the whole massive media interest in the Bra Boys. Yeah it did. And to this day, it sucks that the only things that are ever published are always negative because there are so many positive stories down here. You know guys that are nailing it in sport, or business, or in other facets of the community. Personally it makes life difficult for me if I’m chasing corporate sponsors or mainstream interest, because if you have a Bra Boy tat they run a mile.

The Bra Boys movie though must have added fuel to the fire. Yeah the media interest kinda died down, but when the movie came out, it just ramped up to a whole new level. Then there was my 21st party and the incident with the cops, (A brawl broke out between the Bra Boys and the cops having their Christmas party in the same building. It was big enough to draw helicopters, police dogs and riot squads. By the end of it 30 officers claimed injuries and 8 Bra Boys arrested but none convicted) so it just spiralled out of control and for two years it was pretty bad and pretty incessant.

What went wrong? Becoming a Bra Boy is supposed to be all about friendship and family. You want someone to get a Bra Boys tattoo on the basis that they are going to be a loyal friend. There are a lot of important aspects to being a loyal friend. The only one that seemed to get picked up on or glorified for a long period in Maroubra was that you were a good friend if you would back your mate up in a fight. That’s what courage in Maroubra would be based on. This would be beneficial if you were a soldier at war, but seriously in this day and age that trait is very low on my list of how I would value a friend. Physical courage is a very small aspect of true courage. So the more that aspect of the Bra Boys is glorified the more dead shits you attract to the tattoo. The tattoo ends up bringing the worst out of people, which is sad.

So people got it for the wrong reason and we had a whole generation that were non-stop in trouble and never grew out of getting in trouble, which was sad. And then drug culture really blew up, as it did at most beaches and just added more problems.

Now though you are probably the most high profile Bra Boy in surfing, what do you see as your role? I mean I try and send a positive message. You don’t want to see kids end up on drugs or in jail just for making a few stupid or wrong decisions. When they grow up in this environment and this community, peer pressure is so powerful that it can sway what they do and the decisions they make in those years when they are particulary susceptible to it. So I know you have to be really careful what you show those kids, cause you can wreck their lives. One bad decision can really snowball and it can be very hard to come back from. That’s

LOOKING NO LESS INTIMIDATING FROM THIS ANGLE. CALUM MACAULAY

THE SAME WAVE THAT FEATURES ON MARKS MIRROR FROM THE PREVIOUS PAGE,

Was the movie a good thing or a bag thing for Maroubra? The positives were that it was a really good movie. You know it was the highest gross-

ing documentary in Australian history, which is amazing. Plus it told the story really well. However with the way the media approached it and the fame that the Bra Boys got meant that as a result there were kids that were aspiring to be Bra Boys, but they thought they had to be what the media was portraying. It meant that a whole generation of young kids just got the whole concept of what it meant to be a Bra Boy back-to-front.

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MARK’S IN THE FORM OF HIS LIFE AND THERE’S NO MYSTERY AS TO WHY THAT IS, JUST A WHOLE LOT OF FUCKING HARD WORK. PHOTOS: NATESMITHPHOTO.COM

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what we wanted with the movie Fighting Fear. We hoped it could show in a positive way what being a Bra Boy meant to us growing up. About the strengths of friendship and about what it really means to always have your mates back. It would be nice for the tattoo to bring the best out in someone instead of the worst.

Moving away from your surfing and film making, I’ve heard you also dabble with a bit of corporate speaking. Yeah I’ve been doing that for the last three years. A company called Peak Teams approached me and then Mac (Macario De Souza, Director of Fighting Fear, also known as musician Kid Mac) and we built a corporate training program called Sea of Change. It’s an interactive virtual adventure based on four years of my surfing career and what it takes to become a pro big wave surfer, including getting sponsorship, chasing big waves, organising a team, photographers, team management, PR, everything really. Audiences are put into teams and are given scenarios based on this crazy footage.

Their decisions as a team lead to different outcomes and results. The process is facilitated to provide powerful learning experiences that will benefit their own business.

Who does it get shown to? We’ve done it here in Australia and with banks and corporate clients in New York, Hong Kong and London. There is a lead facilitator who runs through the simulation and I’d do five or 10 minutes here and there telling personal stories about the footage they are seeing. In the last six months I’ve been developing my own keynote hour-long presentation. That’s mainly based on dealing with fear and translating that into the audience’s personal lives.

Do you enjoy it? I mean talking to a room full of London suits must be a little weird. The thing is, I’m terrified of doing it. So I’m giving a talk on how to deal with fear and I’m petrified about the doing the talk (laughs).

But it’s been going really well, it’s just hard to book in advance, cause

I’m afraid of missing a swell.

Some people might think a surfer from Maroubra wouldn’t be of much use in that corporate world? Well yeah, initially I thought, what could I know that could possibly help someone in that corporate world? But you’d be surprised at all the parallels of being a big wave surfer, as well as the business and marketing side. It’s like I’ve done a marketing business degree over the last decade and you actually know more than you think. As long as you can translate that experience into what they need to know it can be pretty powerful for them.

You know I was never a super talented surfer so I’ve had to figure out every single way I can to maximise the small amount of talent I have.

I’m actually probably better at the business side of surfing than I am at the surfing side of surfing.

Any other secret talents, what about your music? Word on the street is you play guitar and piano, and write songs? How much does of a role does it play in your life? It’s a bit like my surfing, not much natural talent but lots of persistence.

Could you be the next Jack Johnson? Or Kid Mac? I sound like a dying cat when I sing, so probably not.

Does it help with the ladies? A mate of yours, Kingy, told me about some of your musical efforts with the girls. I find approaching a girl in a bar scarier than surfing Shippies. Having no verbal game with this head does not make things easy. But I know where this is coming from.

When I was about 19 or 20, I was travelling with Kingy and he was using my computer and found a video clip I had made as a Valentine’s Day present for a girl I was seeing. It was a mixture of photos of us together to U2’s ‘Beautiful Day’ (laughs). Kingy nearly died from laughing so hard and he’s never let me forget it either.

THE REWARD FOR THE HARD WORK? IT’S ALL IN THE VIEW. CALUM MACAULAY

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Back to surfing, you’ve been notably absent in some of the most recent huge paddle in sessions. What’s with that? Can’t you paddle?

Fark, I’m always getting called a friggin Tow Guy (laughs). I think there is more to big wave paddling than just taking big drops. Look I’ve never chased those paddling waves, the big ocean bombies like Mavericks, because they don’t really barrel and I loved to get barrelled. My favourite all time wave is pumping Pipe. I feel like the guys that rule Pipe are the best big wave surfers in the world. Bruce, Jamie, Dorian, JJF, Reef. For me the biggest advance of big wave paddle surfing is Fiji and Jaws – massive, massive waves that barrel and you can get into them paddling!

Now I’ve got a quiver of 10 and 11 footers because it’s waves like that I’m excited to surf. I’d miss any tow session to paddle them. I’ve been training every day so I can surf Jaws this season. I want to be sitting on Dorian’s shoulder, putting my head down every time he does.

Do you ever look and back and think how far you’ve come in surfing?

You’ve just been nominated as one of the five best surfers in heavy water category in the Surfer Poll for example. Well yeah those guys are the five best big-wave surfers in the world, so to go from being terrified of big waves as a kid to being mentioned alongside the best in the business is awesome.

I remember when you came into the Tracks office for the first time with Richie Vass and Macca to look at those Shippies shots. You had no sponsor, Richie was laying carpet and Macca had just done his first-ever short movie. This year when we hooked up in France, you guys were on the red carpet doing an 18 city European promo tour. It looked like some type of fricken surfing version of Entourage. Yeah, it’s been fun. Plus we’ve got a new TV series coming out on Fuel in February called Crew, about the three of us all trying to get our movie made. It’s all about friendship with a backdrop of surfing, music and MMA. Mac is launching his first ever album, Richie is on a mission to get to the UFC and I’m surfing big slabs and trying to figure out how to deal with the fear of public speaking. Looking at the edits so far it’s coming up pretty nuts! In one episode we are all at Anthony Kiedis’ house, watching the movie trying to get him to narrate it, and he’s frothing, it’s surreal. Then there’s footage with Mac hanging backstage with Snoop Dog, so it’s all pretty ridiculous.

How did all this happen? I guess it’s just been about learning how to make the most out whatever amount of talent you have. People always think that they can’t do things because they weren’t born with the talent or genetic gifts. I think you will be blown away by how talented you seem when you just put in the work. x

“... I’VE BEEN TRAINING EVERY DAY SO I CAN SURF JAWS THIS SEASON. I WANT TO BE SITTING ON DORIAN’S SHOULDER, PUTTING MY HEAD DOWN EVERY TIME HE DOES ...”

IT’S NOT ALL TOW FOR MARK, DROPPING IN DURING A SESSION SOMEWHERE IN THE DEEP SOUTH. MORRIS

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