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Perhaps those who grew up in the social media age best understand how to play its game without losing skin in it.
Ziggy Aloha Mackenzie feels like a name written for social media. The 13-year-old Australian-born Bali resident freely admits Instagram is key to building a profile.
“Oh, for sure. Social media is a big part. I didn’t really have a super big following. I wasn’t really posting regularly,” she says of her first posts.
Her grid dates back to June 2022 but it was when she popped up in Insta stories with Australian DJ Paul ‘Fisher’, who married bikini designer Chloe Chapman in Bali this year, that the follower numbers really started climbing.
“When I started, I think Fisher really helped and now I try and do it a lot because it’s a big part of being sponsored and representing a brand [Ziggy has been sponsored by Rip Curl for just under a year] … What I love about it is, it’s a lot easier to find girls who are pushing limits, pushing boundaries, and surfing really well over Instagram. I think there’s a lot more equality,” she says.
So, what’s with the name? Ziggy’s parents, who own Drifter surf shops in Bali, took inspiration from Bob Marley’s son Ziggy and merged it with a Hawaiian word and concept they loved – Aloha. They could have just as aptly signed ‘surf rat’ on Ziggy’s birth certificate. She was born to be one – growing up with the Bukit Peninsula’s best breaks just down the street.Between some home schooling, via an international school based in England, she can usually be found tearing up whichever lineup is going off around the island.
Grommets being grommets, there’s a pecking order that applies.
“There have been a few times when people drop in on me. It’s fine the first time but then they do it again and it can get quite annoying. I was surfing Bingin the other day and some guy was yelling, ‘I’m gonna kill you!’, it’s so crazy now with the crowds.Now that the borders are back open it’s a lot more hectic,” Ziggy insists.
But she adds there is a gendered element still undeniably at play.
“It shouldn’t matter, they shouldn’t disrespect you just because you’re a woman in the surf. But I kind of have to just do whatI can to get a wave, and then they’re like,‘Oh, okay, she’s a good surfer’.”
Having grown up in the mostly adult playground that is Bali, Ziggy speaks with maturity to match her prodigious surfing talent. But she has also clearly inherited a small businesspersons’ gene from her parents: a fearless determination plus gritty resolve to put work in and improve. She surfs with a coach – Indonesian professional surfer Must of a Jeksen three times a week. Meanwhile, her gym trainer, Gabriella, is helping add strength to her five-foot frame, working towards the powerful turns she admires in her heroes Carissa Moore and Steph Gilmore.
Being just 13 with a coaching regime that many older men would envy can make her a target for online hate, Ziggy discloses.But she seems to thrive on being a small fish in the big pond. Like when she happily caddied for coach ‘Mus’ at the PadangC up this year (she also caddied for her mate Erin, above). Mus took her for a paddle between heats and offered a set wave to Ziggy, who floored spectators by coolly threading a needle behind a classic Indonesian curtain.
“He told me to just grab a board and paddle with him out the back. We were so close to the sickest set and it was just roll-ing through. I turned around and only just made the drop, and all of a sudden I was just standing in there, it looked amazing. Right at the end it kind of clamped on me– but it was really cool to see,” she says.
Ziggy notches it up as just another training run on her quest to join the world’s best on the CT. In the meantime she has a few other bucket-list barrels in her sights.
“At some point in the future I would love to surf Teahupo’o and Pipeline, and the Box in WA. That would be amazing.”
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