We don’t have the right snow tires

Aerial wizard Dion Agius has just moved back to Byron Bay in Australia, having spent the last six months collecting frequent flyer points. New York, Mexico, France, Sweden – the man’s been living the good life. Sweden was a little too cold to surf though, so Dion didn’t get any waves – when the kid he was going to go surfing with told him that they didn’t have the right snow tires to get to the beach, Dion decided that the lack of proper equipment was probably for the best. When Stab caught up with Dion, he was thawing out in humid Byron Bay.

Stab: That sharky little session was one of your first surfs back in Australia, huh?
Dion: That was actually the first surf I’ve had in like, a month and a half, ’cause we wrapped up filming in France for (new Globe film) 0000, (pronounced “Year Zero”) and I went on a bit of a Euro trip. I spent some time in Paris and then went to Sweden for a month. I visited some friends in Sweden, hung out there and had a ball. It was snowing n’ shit. It was really rad, I loved it up there. So I’ve just come home, back into summer and that was one of my first surfs back in the water. It was nice to get some summer back into my life. It was like, minus two degrees the whole time I was in Sweden. It got pretty old after a while. It’s probably one of the best places in the world, though. If you could surf there, it would be hands-down the best place on Earth.

I’ve heard there’s some waves there. There was one day actually, when there was waves. I met a kid out one night, he surfed and he called me the next day and was like, “Come surf! There’s waves today and my friend said he just saw someone get barrelled!” I was like, “Fuck, really?” and then he called me back an hour later and said, “Hey don’t worry about it, we don’t have the right snow tires on our car, we can’t get down to the beach.” I was like, “Man, I am not surfing that.” I don’t have a fucking 6mm wetsuit or whatever you need for that shit, haha. But the kid was a legend. He was telling me there’s a pretty cool little surf community up there. There’s like, 100 guys in Stockholm that all surf and are all just mad-dogs. Just all really keen to get in the water. It’s cool to see that, how psyched people are to surf in places like that. They only get to surf a couple of times in the winter or whatever, it’s fucking minus two outside and snowing with howling wind, and they’re just frothing, driving two hours through snow to go surfing. It’s really cool.

Plans to return? I want to try and go back there pretty much every year, for as long as I can, ’cause it’s such a fun place and I’ve got a bunch of friends there. It’s near France too, so while you’re over there you might as well do it.

So you spent a fair bit of time in NY too? Yeah, we had a place there for a few months in Brooklyn. It was amazing. So we did that, then a couple of trips to Mexico, then came home for a few days and then went straight to France. So I’ve only been home for about four days in the last six months. Its been nice to get back.

Are you just gonna stay in Byron Bay for a while? Yeah, just over the summer and the next couple of months at least. I’ve got quite a bit of stuff to handle back home now that I’m here and I just want to be in the summer for a bit. Apart from New York – which was like a zillion degrees when we first got there – I’ve sort of been just chasing the winter around. France got pretty cold in the end and then Sweden was freezing, so it’s good to thaw out a little bit. It’s stinking hot here in Byron now, but it’s raining so it’s super-humid and muggy.

Tell me a bit more about 0000. I think (director) Joe G was trying for a July/August release. If not, then probably when the Trestles contest is on. I think there’s two or three more trips for the movie and then it’s done. It’s coming together really well though. It’s so sick working with Joe, he’s just got so many rad ideas. The way he shoots everything, it always just comes out looking cool. It’s all film and a bit prettier, rather than just being all crazy high-performance stuff.

You’ve been rocking some pretty loony wetsuits lately (flouro yellow/green). Anything to do with the film? Haha, yeah. For the movie, it’s like… shit, it’s kinda hard to explain. It goes with the whole theme of the movie, everyone has a colour. So every trip is stylised. There’s a story behind the whole thing. It’ll make sense when the film comes out. Everyone kinda has their own colour that they use. So if you’re home, you have a board that has a certain hit of colour or whatever. Its been cool, especially through France ’cause the water’s usually pretty brown. So it at least adds a bit of colour too it. But yeah, that yellow one was pretty wild, haha. I didn’t know what I was in for and Joe was like, “Yeah I’m getting you a wettie for France, for the movie.” I was like, “Yeah cool!” Then I got it and it was just… oh, man. It definitely makes photos pop though, especially if there’s not much else going on. Maybe that’s the trick, just head-to-toe flouro from now on.

The photogs won’t miss you. It was kinda embarrassing, haha. You could see that wettie from like, two kilometres away.