But we digress – not really beach related news but interesting all the same, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney manged to get themselves into the New York Times this week with the opening of an art exhibition that was an art exhibition all of its own!! According to the article, “There’s this process of reduction going on,” he [Stuart Ringholt] said. “I asked the question of why the contemporary art community stopped at wearing black. Why didn’t they reduce further and strip back the clothing from the visitor?”

You can read more about the event here. If any readers here were in attendance, we’d like to hear your perspective so drop us a line!

First up, Clean Up Australia Day (CUAD) will be upon us in a month, so time to get organised if you haven’t already. We’re pleased to see there are already a couple of sites registered at our favourite beaches – if you are local to either Pt Impossible in Victoria, or Birdie Beach in NSW, register with the CUAD site and get along! CUAD at one of our official beaches is a great way to show you support our free beaches, and want to keep them pristine for the enjoyment of ALL beach users! Don’t forget to wear appropriate clothing in areas off the beach, and follow the local instructions regarding safety during the event.

In other news, there’s a new site for people to check out!! Ultimate Designer Clothing – it’s a bit “tongue in cheek”, since no clothing is _obviously_ the ultimate in designer wear (!), but we recommend you check it out because it seems to be aimed at the Australian youth demographic!! Check out this article, which introduces the intent of the site and why it was created. A couple of the other interesting posts we liked included “15 reasons to be naked”, and “The steps to becoming a free spirit” – check them out, and make sure you leave a comment on the site showing your support for this new effort!

There’s been lots of news lately surrounding Ladies Bay in New Zealand. It appears there’s been a bit of a furor over signage even though the beach itself is not exactly official! For a quick overview of the articles, you can try here, here and here. There’s even a few comments from beach users on this site here. The reason we raise the NZ discussion here is because it is so similar to the battles we have had with our beaches here in Australia – but interestingly, many of the comments suggest that some signage would have solved the issue, and not wholesale police action or beach closure! Kerre Woodham, a NZ Herald columnist, wrote a pretty interesting commentary as well, and is worth a read.

If any readers here went along to the CAVN Samurai Beach Picnic day yesterday, we’d love to get a report on how the day went! In fact, let us know how all your local events go, via the contact page, and we’ll post the updates here on a regular basis!

For now, please take a look around and enjoy. If you have ideas for things you would like to see on the site, or things you want the site to be able to do (or problems you encounter while wandering around), just use the “Contact Us” link at the top of the page!! We’ve also noticed that there are still plenty of you using old bookmarks pointing to pages that don’t exist – please update your bookmarks, or just head to the home page as the default.

And we are always looking for contributors – are you passionate about our beaches, and want to write about it? Drop us a line – we’re looking for new contributors in every state, particularly if you have local beach knowledge and have your ear to the ground on local news and views!

A recent visit to one of Victoria’s beaches highlighted the plight of the traditional Victorian (and probably global) nudist – we’re an aging community if you were to only take the beach-goers as representative of our population!! Today we saw a few people at our chosen beach, less than expected for a warm day – mostly middle-to-late aged males, single, although we did see two older couples turn up at different times, and one solitary female who walked the length of the beach and then tucked herself into a corner of the beach away from prying eyes!

What is becoming of our community? We’re a group of aged introverts casting furtive glances in the direction of other nudists, occasionally saying a curt “hello” or a brief nod, wondering if we should chat to anyone or keep to ourselves, or something? Going to the beach these days is not exactly easy even for the most comfortable nudist, with all the dune dwellers, carpark cruisers and poor facilities or access.

It would appear to be the same the world over, although internationally there are a few new trends emerging that are interesting and worth keeping an eye on. The first is that underground nudist movement in an ultra conservative culture like India is actually (slowly) becoming more public. According to the article titled “Being Nude: Nothing Unnatural About it“, meetup groups have formed and the topic is at least generating a little discussion. If nudism can become more public in a heavily conservative culture like India, surely there is hope for us here in our more liberal western cultures? Hmmm…

Another positive trend seems to highlight that nudism is not actually dead with today’s youth – while the current generation are often talking about how to get more of the younger generation interested in the lifestyle, it would appear they already are, and have set about being nudists in their own way.

Check out the article on MTSUSidelines – “Nudism Embraced by the Younger Generation” – it would appear that the 20-somethings would rather be nude in the safe company of a small group of like-minded friends than hit the beach or join a club. That’s not to say they don’t occasionally visit clubs or resorts, but they do so more as a holiday/break rather than an ongoing practice. And naked dinners seem to be popular in the US as well.

What’s interesting about all this is that the unwillingness of the youth to hang out in clubs and on beaches may well have nothing to do with their unwillingness to be nude. Put simply, nudism is still perceived as being an older generation lifestyle choice – and we all know that once the kids leave home, the last thing they plan to do is hang out with people the same age as their parents.

This could explain why Vita Nuda has been so popular with the younger generation – it is the youth providing a forum for the youth, and not the older generation trying to get the youth. That makes it interesting for the people involved with this portal (including this webmaster) – we’re aged in the middle somewhere, early to late 30′s, not part of the older generation and a bit beyond the younger generation. How do we fit in?

Us 30-somethings have the opportunity to empower the youth with our experience, without trying to muscle in on what they are trying to achieve. Let them do what they want to do, in a forum or location that is comfortable for them. It’s not about trying to get the youth involved in _our_ nudist community, it’s about getting the youth interested in being active in their own community, and helping them spread the word and generate interest for themselves. That kind of “behind the scenes” encouragement and experience should help as the youth get older and wiser themselves – if they’ve had great experiences in safe surroundings, they’re more likely to stay nudists and be more relaxed and open about their interests.

Read the article, it is definitely an interesting insight, and food for thought… hmmm, naked dinner perhaps?

(in case the link breaks again, it was originally posted on a site called “believeindestiny.com”, which appears to dead – the uncensored video is here)

It’s been 2 months since we last posted anything – just goes to show how the cold really slows the community down, with only the regular swim nights continuing to keep nudists in their natural state (although it does get quite cold in the swim centers as well!). And it’s swim center controversy behind this post as well – news in tonight that Channel 9 News ran a story about Solar West’s nude swim nights, a fascinating (and short) article that almost seemed to be Channel 9 doing some news trolling??

We’ll not do an analysis here, except to say it reminds us a bit of the beach fight we survived back in 2007 – lots of sensationalist reporting, surprise articles with little or no community consultation, lack of balance in the reporting and factual inaccuracies. You can check out the articles yourself, on these links:

Channel 9 news witch hunt? on the Solar West website;
Pool opens for nude group, although you may need to hunt for the video as a direct link does not appear to be available.

At the time of writing, the video had only had 380 views, with no Tweets or FB Likes – we suspect Solar West may have received a little publicity out of this, rather than the outrage perhaps Channel 9 were hoping for. It does beg the question though – did Jacqueline Felgate put her hand up and say “that story looks awesome, I want a part of that!!”, or was she lumped with it? She did post “Exclusive: A secret nude swimming club at a council pool” on her Twitter feed just before the news broadcast – didn’t get any serious bites though, one respondent saying “you’re funny!! Everyone is tweeting about gay Katter brother, you about nude pool! Hahaha!”, while another said “how do you know? ” – Touche!

Keep an eye on the Solar West website, as more updates are sure to be posted there!

Update: The Herald Sun has jumped on board the article, with similar tones to the newscast. You can read the article here. The comments left by readers are really interesting, with the majority in favour of the nudists – no surprises there.

Update: Apparently the swim nights have been suspended pending an investigation by the council. The Herald Sun has the article here. Solar West has been using the pool like this for years, it will be interesting to see if the council wilts under the weight of a little public controversy! Hey Maribyrnong Council, your pool is a business – and Solar West have been one of your best customers over many years. We all know the “investigation” is simply lip service, otherwise pool staff would have reported inappropriate behaviour years ago. Here’s hoping the council is sensible and can rise above a little unwarranted commotion!

As a side note, Jacqui Felgate (the original Channel 9 reporter who break the amazing “exclusive”!) has not had any other comments on her tweet since the story, but later on had a little ditty with Nicole Denton (3AW Senior Producer for Ross & John) about Channel 9 breaking the story first and not the Herald Sun!! Australian media, point scoring on the backs of minority groups and never looking back at the chaos they caused. Hey Jacqui, if the reporting was balanced you might have mentioned the nudists never wanted $45,000 in ratepayer funded pool modifications (and that story was your own network – who’s doing your research??).

You can click here to check out the full article (and NSFW warning, the top of the page has a large picture on it!!). Let us know if this link fails to give you the article, bebaretoo.com may rewrite their links to funnel traffic to other parts of the site.

Update: We identified another article that also has a view on the decline of nudism – apparently we’re all so relaxed about nudity now that there doesn’t need to be a description for our liberal nude-ness! Or perhaps we’re more uptight than ever?? Perhaps you should go and check out the Hartford Advocate article yourself for some more insight!

The full-frontal nudity flyer, which had a small black square covering her lower private parts, was also left on the windscreens of cars parked in the area.

Interesting issue – it’s commonplace to be naked in your home and even your backyard, and legislation mostly talks about being nude in public places (which your house is not). However, we also have to use common-sense – if you have houses overlooking your property, then you might want to take some additional steps to ensure your privacy (and it’s never a good plan to annoy your neighbours, you do have to live next to them!!).

In this case though, it was the school that cut down the trees – but it is unclear whether the trees themselves were providing the privacy, or just making the privacy better. If there is a fence already in place, it could be argued that the students would have to go out of their way to looking into the nudists yard – is there a law against going out of your way to look into someone’s backyard?

From a nudist perspective, it’s easy to understand Anya’s frustration. However, the article implies there’s more of a story there – it mentions that the nudist couple had asked the school to replace the trees, so perhaps handing out flyers was part of that issue not being resolved? We’re speculating here of course, but we welcome comments and opinions!

Check out the articles yourself, here and here and here

But to the crux of the story – should Anya have handed out flyers at all??

First registered in Feb 1994 (!), that’s about all the info we have – does anyone have any additional information? We were advised a few years back that FBAVic was no more, so we’re not sure what this latest find actually means!

Contact us via the contact page if you don’t have an account, new user registration is still disabled pending a better spam registration robot solution!