Mason talks MP, gals and maybe the roundest Kirra
tub ever! Even Mick Fanning said so!
The Hawaiian surfer Mason Ho, 26, recently
concluded his 24th trip to Australia. Although he failed to win
either WQS event he entered, indeed, the first time he hasn’t
stepped on a podium in months, his days were filled with love,
laughter and tubes. Mason Ho is a supplicant to good times and
Australia fulfils his most profound needs.
“I first came there when I was 14,” says Mason, adding it was a
solo trip after his Dad, the famous surfer Michael Ho, “had this
huge, gnarly… ah… it’s an R-rated story… but he
could’t make it. I was crushed, I was traumatised. I’d been wanting
to go my whole life.”
Fate stepped in when Dino Andino, father of Kolohe, told his old
pal Mike he’d look after the kid. That was a dozen years ago and
Mason has visited Australia twice a year since.
“Frick, Australia’s like the closest place to me besides
Hawaii,” says Mason. “I love every single thing about it.”
BeachGrit: … let’s talk specifics, what turns you on
about Australia?
Mason: I love it how all the people are so funny, so polite, but
they’re bad-ass and screw with you and help you at the same time.
It’s funny and it’s… weird. Everyone’s weirdly nice even when they
get mad. Over here in Hawaii, when someone gets mad… whoa, that’s
evil. But in Australia, everyone’s a comedian. I also like how you
can order a healthy juice anywhere, how you have the best waves in
the world along with Indo and Hawaii. And then there’s the leniency
on the whole fun thing. In Bali, you can get killed if you get
caught with a mushroom. Australias the coolest place ever.
What’s your favourite place to visit?
I’ve always said, West Oz my whole life but after this last trip
to Snapper, that’s right there too. Right under West Oz. West Oz
’cause it’s a little less people, you can go get your slabs and the
do what you want on the beach… I loooove that place. West Oz,
still, by a hair. But that Kirra thing blew my mind just now.
What’s your favourite wave and why?
Oh! Snap! Damn! I can give you four waves. Yeah! Okay! F’sure!
The Box, North Point, Snapper Rocks, Kirra. Boom! I haven’t done
too much adventuring, like, deep adventures, haven’t been to the
mysto ones, only the commercial ones. I love ’em! Oh my god, I love
The Box. My Dad gets bummed on how much I love The Box. One year,
(Chris) Ward was out there at dark every morning. I didn’t have my
own car and I was a little scared of The Box and Ward being out
there every mounting was the coolest thing I’d seen in my life. So
as soon as I was able to rent my own car, I was the guy out there
in the dark. Two feet or 10-feet, there at dark.
Tell me about the best wave you’ve ever caught in
Australia
Oh my god! This latest wave! But I’ve had a lot of waves in
Australia that I dream about. Australia has these weird little
sparkles to the waves. But my latest one, this one wave at Kirra,
this crazy double up… okay… let me say something about
Kirra. I’d always heard stories about Kirra from my Dad. I’d always
heard stories from other people about Kirra. And I’ve surfed solid
Kirra before, but this was nuts. Mick had his ski and he dropped me
off and then I got swept down and this wave doubled up. A weird
double-up. I got to the bottom and I could see the sand. I was
telling Nathan (Fletcher) that I don’t know if I’ve ever had a
barrel at Backdoor that was as round. It was the biggest barrel
I’ve pulled into, no back, and there was a two-foot barrel on top
of the wave. I want to say that it was over a 10-foot face…
easy. Twelve-foot face! Thirteen feet! No back! And there
was that two-foot barrel on top of the back of the wave trying to
crawl into my barrel to screw me up. I pushed through the
whitewater, this 10-to-15-foot chandelier, punched through it, got
into the clean spot, maybe one or two pumps, no more
speed from the chandelier, the wave sucked up, I did a
barrel roll, ate shit and got slammed. The part that tripped me out
was all the groms and Mick told me, ‘Brah, that was the thickest
wave we’ve ever seen go through here!’ I’ve had a few at The Box
that I got blown out of but I remember this Kirra one because I
was, like, thinking a million things at once. I was getting flashes
of MP (Michael Peterson) in my head.
MP’s your favourite Australian surfer,
yeah?
Oh yeah! F’sure my favourite Australian. I think of that guy all
the time. Anytime I drive on that road going up to Kirra or Snapper
I remember when I went with my Dad for the first time. Kirra was
gone (because of the sand-pumping that created the Super Bank) and
my Dad was freaking out about it, just snapping. I was, like,
almost scared, saying, ‘C’mon Dad, it’s okay.’ He was, ‘No it’s
not!’ Now he just loves Greenmount. Now he’s forgotten about how
mad he was. Anyway, my Dad used tell me all these stories about MP,
always these cool funny stories, stuff that I admired when I was
little, about how competitive he was, how he did his own thing.
Somehow he’d hang out with Dad so he felt like an uncle I didn’t
get to hang out with. I read a lot, just not books, but I was
reading his book (MP: The Life of Michael Peterson… click here…
) when I won a little contest at Bells with Wilko and Jordy in
the final.
What perplexes you about Australia?
Everything makes sense there! The car thing, sometimes. I’ll go
on the right side of the road and I’ll hear, ‘You little punk!’ and
I’m, ‘I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry!’ You don’t seem to have Tylenol
or ibuprofen easily available either. I was looking for ibuprofen
everywhere in the whole town. But, then, I like that you can’t buy
it everywhere.
What sucks about Australia?
I hate to say it but there’s nothing! It’s like a huuuuuge
Haewaiian island. I love it how everyone lives on the coast. And
everyone’s so cool. I even burned a bunch of guys this trip and
they were psyched… psyched! I got burned a bunch too,
of course. But I was, like, pleading with them, ‘I’m so sorry!’ And
they’re, ‘No, I’m psyched!’ You don’t get that anywhere.
Where would you find the cutest girls in Australia and
how would you describe them?
Oh the cutest girls! that’s another thing! I like the Australian
girl because they’re a little bit like us, actually not like us
guys ’cause we’re pretty bad, but they have more of a guy’s
confidence. They just put it out. Everywhere else girls are
conservative. No girls make me laugh more than Australian girls.
Those girls crack me. I’d marry an Australian girl but none like
me.
I’m reasonably positive y’might’ve sourced a
couple…
Oh, I met one or two.
