We recommend you get involved, it would be great to get many more people along and grow our numbers from prior years – there are already two beaches registered for CUA (Pt Impossible in Victoria and Birdie Beach in NSW) and it would be fantastic to get lots of people along to show their support for the beaches we all enjoy (and also do some cleaning up as well!!). If you do get involved, remember to stick to the rules outlined by your site supervisor for your safety, and only be nude in areas where it is permitted.

Don’t forget to check out the upcoming events at the bottom of the page, and if you have news or events you’d like included on the site, just drop us a note via the contact page!

Cr Ron Humphrey is back, and interested in our beach again!! Given the outcome last time, we would have thought he would have bigger issues to resolve. Apparently not. That’s OK, with Ron having his second shot at being on Council, he can be sure there’ll be plenty of people scrutinising the media ready to jump on anything interesting he might have to say. The whole article itself is worth the read, but we noticed a couple of interesting quotes worth mentioning below.

At least 11 people have been handed $200 fines by police and local law officers since the two- week blitz started last Friday.

That’s brilliant – we’re always happy to see people who behave inappropriately or are caught in areas outside the designated clothing optional area to be dealt with accordingly. The nudist community in Australia, and around the world for that matter, is often tarnished with a brush not of our own making. The Pt Impossible beach has two problem areas – the carpark/toilets and the dunes. Neither of these areas are designated nude areas. Other beaches have carparks and toilets, and have similar problems – so lets blame all the beach users on those beaches as well, surely they must be responsible for things that happen nearby. Or the dogwalkers, surely they have a part in it?? We’re being facetious here, but you get our drift.

And while the article itself is not bad in it’s general flavour, the journalist (Andrea Hamblin) does let Ron get away with a couple too many general purpose “headline grabbers”:

The beach threatened the family-friendly atmosphere of Torquay’s growth corridor, he said.

C’mon Andrea, that’s weak sauce – quoting something just because it came out of his mouth doesn’t make it good! What does that sentence even mean? The beach itself hasn’t done anything except be a beach, it is as family-friendly as Whites Beach, and Torquay’s growth corridor is down a dirt road?? You can quote us on this one – “The narrow dirt road to Pt Impossible threatens the safety of family cars, placing families at risk driving down Torquay’s growth corridor”. Maybe that will get the road fixed, it’s a real issue!! Again, we’re being facetious, but it is always handy to know who all the players are – a quote is only worth as much as the reputation of the source…

Cr Ron Humprey is not a new character in this “close the beach” theatre production, a show that has been running for years. Cr Ron hasn’t changed his tune much either, still blaming the nudists and continuing to mix his messages:

“When it was originally proclaimed (a nude beach), it was a tip down there and now there’s a big hotel, a golf course, a lot of residential development and a lot of kids,” Cr Humphrey said.

And a nude beach, Ron – you forgot to mention the international tourist attracting, revenue raising, family and business friendly beach that brings people with disposable incomes into Australia. European tourists who look up nude beaches in Australia are attracted to Victoria BECAUSE it has 4 nude beaches – and do you think they’ll visit your town if they see that the police AREN’T cracking down on inappropriate behaviour? Do you think they’ll visit if they see a Shire Councillor who thinks shutting down one beach solves an unrelated problem?

If the nude beach lost it’s designation, would the inappropriate behaviour in the dunes and carpark stop?? Or, from the flip side, is it only the well-behaved and ever vigilant/passionate nudists that have prevented the dunes/carpark from being much worse? We’ve made points about this in the past, relating to Pt Impossible and Sunnyside specifically. We even know from the Monash University study “Feasibility of Identifying Family Friendly Beaches along Victoria’s Coastline” that crime prevention is best achieved through environmental design and having MORE people use the beach, not less. If you are interested, you can read our previous post

Cr Humphrey said the perverse behaviour of some beachgoers could ruin the area for others.
“If that area was still being used that way, I would take up the campaign (to have it closed) myself,” he said.

Cr Ron, you know it’s not the beachgoers who are ruining it for others, it never has been. A more constructive action that all beach users on the Surf Coast would support and applaud you for is to clean up the inappropriate use of ALL carparks, and ALL toilet blocks. Focusing on the one beach is a distraction and not looking at the real source of the issue. Surf Coast Shire residents look to you for an approach to solving the big issues, not the one nearest your backyard. But if you want to take up the campaign, you know we’ll be happy to jump in to make sure it stays open to nudists.

Just a couple of quick additional notes:

• We look forward to the Geelong Advertiser, Surf Coast Times and other local papers reporting fair and balanced news on these topics. We also, as always, invite any of those papers and their reporters to contact us if they want a community perspective; and
• Cr Humphrey is very familiar with our passionate approach to keeping the nude beach open, while making sure the dunes and the carpark (non-nude areas) are identified and targeted for exactly the kind of blitzes mentioned in this article.

The nude beach itself is not the issue, and never has been – those involved in defeating Cr Ron’s last attempt to close Pt Impossible in 2006 will be ready again to jump in again, and we invite the nudist community to show their support of the beach by putting comments in to this site and directly against newspaper articles as we identify them. Feel free to write to Andrea Hamblin, it looks like she’s one of the few assigned to quoting Ron! Her email address is on her link above…

As always, nudists behave appropriately on the beach, don’t go in the dunes and report inappropriate behaviour around the beach to the police – we fully support the Torquay police and the Surf Coast Shire in addressing the inappropriate behaviour of a group of non-nudists acting in non-designated areas. Their behaviour is not a reflection of the nudist community, is not in line with nudist beach etiquette, and should be stomped on.

Beaches affected are Pt Impossible and Southside, and this process is our opportunity to make comments or suggestions covering various topics around the beaches and their management.

We highly recommend anyone interested in contributing should fill out the online survey, or register to attend one of the workshops coming up later this month. We missed out on being part of the CMP Community Reference Group (decided back in September), so this is our chance to get our voices heard!

Check out these links to get more info:
- GORCC home page – http://www.gorcc.com.au/
- About the CMP – http://www.gorcc.com.au/projects/298/
- CMP Fact Sheet – Fact Sheet
- CMP Survey – http://surveyfactory.net/s/746/cmpsurvey1

Dr Les Rootsey is quoted in the article, which is short but says what it needs to – and pleasantly avoids any social stereotyping or poor puns that we’ve seen in Victorian media in the past!

More interesting though is the reader poll, and the reader comments. The poll (at the time of writing this) had 70% of readers in favour of the idea. But a couple of the comments readers have made a quite fascinating!!

Show your support and vote in the poll, and we’ll keep a watch on developments!

Update: Another article from a couple of days ago, pointing out that Queensland tourist dollars are heading down the coast to Byron Bay, highlights that nude beaches are actually tourist money spinners – a fact well supported in the US (Gunnison Beach NJ is one of the largest around), and Europe (Cape D’Agde in France is an entire nudist town!). Click here to read the entire article.

This time around, Sunnyside beach at Mt Eliza has popped up on the radar, but it doesn’t look like nudists are involved (or even being accused!!). After a little research, we think this is the summary story (and correct us if you know more than we do!): Charles Jacobsen (Char) is a retirement home operator who owns the beach front property previously owned by the late Sir Reginald Ansett and Myer family. It’s hard to tell from the boundaries, but it looks like the property in question is not bordering the CO beach at all, it seems to be the next beach further along to the north.

Anyway, it would appear Char has had battles concerning development of his property in the past, and prevailed. Char raised the hackles of equal opportunity groups and divided the Mornington Peninsula community by proposing a “gay proof fence” along the foreshore of his property! Wow!!

It does appear Char isn’t short of a quid, based on his donation of the foreshore land to council back in 2007 along with 10 years of maintenance, when the subdivision was first approved. If you are interested in the original submissions, Mornington Peninsula Shire has comprehensive meeting minutes available online, along with a map of the area in question and the proposed location of the fence.

You can check out the article in The Age and read all about it yourself – the request for the 400m fence is going to be heard by VCAT in the next couple of months.

As always people, do the right thing on our beaches and make sure nudists can never be accused of behaving inappropriately!!