Good vibes

You know you’re driving into Muriwai, a small coastal community in Auckland’s northwest, when you spot old surfboards on the side of the road, transformed into letterboxes and a sign prompting you to slow down for “free range kids”.

Simple surf shacks and modern houses are nestled among the native trees that envelop the road, which winds down to the beach, then on to a headland overlooking two of Auckland’s most popular surf breaks: Muriwai Beach and Maukatia/Maori Bay.

It’s here, in this wilder, more windswept Surfers Paradise, that Steph Brookes, 33, Rachel Lewis, 32, and Zofia Seymour, 30, have made their home and the base for their business, Betty Zine. The self published quarterly magazine celebrates women’s surf culture in Aotearoa and was born out of the frustration of New Zealand’s Level 4 lockdown, when surfing was banned and some of the women had lost work.

Zofia, ’s designer and curator, had created zines (small self-published magazines) in college, and thought