“Natural Selection ended up booking me and Kauli Vaast a private jet to get there. I felt like I was a billionaire, they were full serving caviar and shit, I was tripping… I was walking onto a private jet with no shoes on and you could just tell they were probably thinking, ‘Who is this Aussie chick?'”
It’s a classic story that only Milla Brown could tell.
With Natural Selection announcing its return for a 10-day strike mission through South Africa this September, Milla will compete again to defend the title which helped transform her from one of Australia’s brightest talents into a global surfing phenom.
At just 17-years-old, Milla got the call up to compete at the inaugural event in Micronesia shortly after her appearance in the Vans Pipe Masters, another bucket list moment for the teenager.
However, when she went to book her travel for the event, all the flights were booked. The solution? A private jet for her and fellow competitor Kauli Vaast who also ran into the same problem, if you want to call it that.
The luxury travel was a world away from Milla’s laidback Northern Beaches upbringing. But when she arrived in the pacific, she looked right at home on the grinding unruly right hander.
“That was one of the best trips I’ve been on,” said Milla. “I was tripping at the list of people involved. It was essentially a free surf trip and competition to win some money, shared with my idols in crazy waves in the middle of nowhere. It doesn’t get much better than that.”
Natural Selection is the brainchild of snowboarding icon, Travis Rice, who decided to go a little more ‘off-piste’ with an event in 2021. Originally, Rice took some of the world’s gnarliest snowboarders dropped them in the middle of nowhere and invited them to prove their worth by essentially dodging death. When he adapted the concept for surfing, Milla was on the list alongside Mikey February, Coco Ho, Kauli Vaast, Noah Beschen, Eithan Osborne, Anna Dos Santos, Victor Bernardo, Kirra Pinkerton, Harry Bryant, Alan Cleland Jr, and Soli Bailey.
Most of that virtuoso crew had already turned their back on the WSL’s conventional path and provided a particular kind of fizz to the Red Bull-backed event. This was no scene for the average surf clone. Although the youngest participant, Milla was right at home with the motley crew of freesurfers.
The setting was a remote right-hander that throttled along the fringe of a Micronesian island. The wave felt menacing and untamed; much of the contest went down in sketchy, overhead barrels with ribbed faces, chandeliers and pinching sections. Milla revelled in the somewhat unruly conditions; hucking her teenage frame over the ledge of wind-ripped funnels, making online viewers wince then cheer as she threaded the unpredictable pits. Her fearless but refined tube-riding act ultimately earned her victory in the event and acclaim from surfers around the world.
Meanwhile, a promo clip for Natural Selection featuring Milla went viral; suggesting she offered something a little less vanilla than the regular post-heat scoops on the WSL.
In the clip, Milla can be seen talking to the camera saying:
“He was like ‘How long have you been surfing for?’ And I was like ‘straight out of the fucking womb’.”
When I ask Milla where she gets her unique attitude from, her response is a little less shoot from the hip.
“I don’t know honestly. I just try to be myself and I don’t care what anyone thinks. But I do try and let my surfing do the talking.”
It did exactly that in Micronesia.
Now, as Natural Selection packs its bags for South Africa, Milla returns as the defending champion – only this time, the barefoot Aussie boarding the plane won’t be the teenager wondering how she ended up on a private jet. She’ll arrive as the surfer everyone is trying to beat.
