A variety of sources on the Internet (usually throughout Europe, and to a lesser extent the USA) have all produced research showing nudism is resulting in a boom in tourism!! People are willing to travel all over the world for quality facilities, and are willing to pay for it when they get there!!

There’s also a boom in what’s being termed the “non-nudist nude tourist” - people who don’t think of themselves as nudists but have no problem at all shedding their clothes when the facilities allow for it. Furthermore, these tourists don’t want to sacrifice on quality - no longer are nudists pitching tents and hiding in the communes, there’s even a super expensive nudist retreat for the rich and famous (Click here).

What’s interesting is that the tourism industry (ever watchful of the numbers!!) is right across the boom, so much so that the rise in nude tourism has jumped dramatically. According to research, between 1992 and 2000 nudist tourism tripled to $US 400m annually, and is expected to grow rapidly (Click here for the research). According to Peng Travel in the UK (Nude tourism operator since 1971 - Click here), there are an estimated 20-25 million nudist tourists all looking for destinations to travel, and for somewhere to spend their tourist dollars.

Even in 2003, the Wall Street Journal recognised the growth potential in the nude economy - Click here

What does all this mean? If you’re a traveller looking for a nude holiday or destination, the options are now more plentiful than ever. And if you’re a destination (like a resort, or a council that controls a nude beach), then the tourist dollars could be coming your way, as nudists pay good money to travel to quality locations.

It would appear once the Council has made their decision, the process moves along to the next notch - in this case the Great Ocean Road Coast Committee (GORCC). We have sent an Open Letter response to Cr. Humphrey which you can read below.

Still a long way to go before we’ve put this fire out - keep up the support, and keep writing those letters!!

Below is the cover page - You should download the full letter here -> Click here

Dear Cr. Humphrey,

Please find attached an Open Letter drafted in response to your motion to apply for the revocation of the clothing optional status of Pt Impossible and Southside Beaches, in the Surf Coast Shire.

This letter has been posted on a number of community forums and websites, including landed/non-landed Victorian nudist clubs and resorts, all of whom have members who are regular users of the Surf Coast Shire Facilities. We invite open and transparent discussion of your concerns and encourage the full and open disclosure of all supporting information and statistics in support of your case. We make every effort to ensure our facts are correct and can be independently validated, and we apologise in advance for any errors that may occur. Responses received will also be posted to the community for review and verification, to ensure the nudist community remains informed. More information can be found at http://www.fbanavic.org

We are a community in support of safer beaches and facilities for the use of everyone. We urge the Surf Coast Shire, the Great Ocean Road Coast Committee (GORCC), and the Minister to work with us towards providing an environment that is safe and enjoyable for all users.

We would appreciate if this letter and our concerns be included in the GORCC scheduled meeting for this Friday 18 August 2006. We apologise for the late delivery of this information, we have been excluded from the process to date and have only just become aware of the scheduled GORCC meeting.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any queries.

Kind regards

Victorian Nudist Community
webmaster [Email address: webmaster #AT# fbanavic.org - replace #AT# with @ ]

cc:
Hon. Rob Hulls (Minister for Planning)
GORCC Head Office
David Clarke - Executive Officer, GORCC
Free Beach Association of Australia
Australian Nudist Federation
Cr. Beth Davidson (Surf Coast - Anglesea)
Cr. Keith Grossman (Surf Coast - Torquay)
Cr. Rose Hodge (Surf Coast - Jan Juc)
Cr. Roly Livingstone (Surf Coast - Winchelsea)
Cr. Libby Mears (Mayor, Surf Coast - Aireys Inlet)
Cr. Lindsday Schroeter (Surf Coast - Winchelsea)
Cr. Jim Tutt (Surf Coast - Anglesea)
Cr. Dean Webster (Surf Coast - Torquay)

Sources informed us of a website they thought we might find interesting - apparently the man who initiated the attack on our legal free beaches is actually not that popular!! We didn’t believe it though, so we had to check it out first hand…

Here are some of our favourite quotes (and keep in mind we have no way of verifying any of this, so reach your own conclusions!! We are not responsible for the content, we are merely the messenger!!):

It been a bad week for Ron. About a month ago, a room that had been dug into the dunes at Torquay, was found right across from Ron’s house. Ron screamed perverts and made up a new word. “Deprivates”. He then screamed sexual abuse and demanded a nude beach a kilometer away have it’s clothing optional status removed. It was a moral panic for the prudish types of Torquay. Unfortunately for Ron, the local coppers did not know of one case of sexual abuse from the area, so Ron called them names. Yesterday the kids who built their cubby came forward putting a rather large hole in Ron’s campaign to get rid of sickos building homo lairs.

Ron blew into town about five years ago and started complaining. Every week he would write a letter to the editor moaning about the local council. “Zealot” would be a good term. “Inaccurate zealot” is a better one.

After bitching and moaning about council spending for years, Ron’s first action as a councilor was to lobby for $12,000 mayoral robes and chains. “It’s not that much” declared Ron. I shit you not.

Ron was a man of the people and they urged him to stand for pre-selection for the state seat of South Barwon.
Unfortunately for Ron, he is not the brightest pollie and doesn’t understand that it is a game of numbers. If my spies in the Liberal party are accurate, Ron lost preselction to an undertaker by 55-5. For every person that voted for Ron, eleven would rather have a bloke who buries people as their candidate.

Ouch… If you want to read more, Click here

Behind the scenes over the last couple of weeks, a number of people have really worked hard in pursuing this issue on behalf of the entire community. In particular, thanks goes to BendigoNudey, a commenter here and a regular on the Melbourne_Nudists-Naturists forum, for his tireless efforts in letter writing, confidence boosting, and general “never say die” attitude. He had the following to say in one of his recent comments on this site (slightly edited to clarify context):

I sense that with some urgent action, we may actually save Pt Impossible (if so, we should petition for it to be renamed “Pt Bloody-near-impossible” in memory of the freedom struggle of 2006!)

I know a lot of you have been doing heaps to try to save Pt Impossible, but with a bit more effort, I get a sense that we might even win.

But it’s not time to pop the Champagne corks yet!

Various pieces of correspondence received from a number of parties involved indicate that the two councillors absent from the Council meeting on 18th July WOULD NOT have supported the motion requesting the revocation of the legal nude bathing area at Point Impossible.

This would mean Council is actually divided 5/4 on the issue, rather than the 5/2 by which the motion was passed.

URGENT:

If you haven’t already done so, please send an email to the Great Ocean Road Coast Committee (GORCC) who will be considering whether to support the Council motion at their meeting THIS FRIDAY 18th August. Don’t forget to be reasonable and respectful - we are trying to follow a process here, even though we were excluded from the process that started this whole mess (and have still not been approached for comment or discussion).

You can find email addresses at the GORCC website (Click here), or contact the following:

Great Ocean Road Coast Committee email: torquay [Email address: torquay #AT# gorcc.com.au - replace #AT# with @ ]

The GORCC committee members email addresses do not seem to be available, but you can see who they are here: Click here

Follow this up with messages to Minister Hulls, and emails of support for Councillors Mears, Davidson, Webster and Hodge at SurfCoast Shire.

SurfCoast Shire website: Click here, or
refer to the Addresses page under “Our Beaches” (Click here)

Who knows, if we impress the Minister enough, he may even let us keep Campbell’s Cove!

Thanks BendigoNudey, your efforts are amazing and appreciated by all!!

The groundswell of support for saving our beaches is excellent, but it can’t stop there - talk to everyone you know, post in all the forums, point people at this site if you want to, but we need to get the word even more widely spread!!

Other interesting points to note that we have discovered through our various discussions, research, emails and correspondence:

• Some of the statistics and “facts” used in building support for this motion likely warrant a much closer look
• The issue affects our communities civil liberties, particularly with the lack of consultation from the councillor bringing the motion, and many of the other parties involved who supported it
• It is well known and accepted by those in the “circles of power” that the law-abiding legitimate users of the beach should not be persecuted for the behaviour of a few others (who are outside the naturist community). It is believed groups such as GORCC and the Minister will take a much more “measured” approach to this issue, and as a community we need to ensure this does occur
• It is clear from the various pieces of correspondence that the motivations behind this action seem to be very political and actually have very little to do with “safety” or the interests of the community - yet that was exactly the platform used for getting the motion over the line!
• Clothing optional beach users and naturists are a community group with the same rights and responsibilities as any other group supported by the Shire and the State Government. We don’t want to suggest that our community is being discriminated against, and so urge the relevant bodies to take a much more reasonable look at the issues being considered and their REAL validity in the bigger picture

The SurfCoast Shire has a fight on its hands…

And the Minister is going to be sick of hearing about us in the lead up to the election!!

We encourage GORCC and the Minister to do the right thing - legitimate users of the facilities are not the issue here, there is no research to support it, and it will only end up looking like an active community group was persecuted in the interests of some alternative agenda.

There’s lots of coastline for all of us to share - it’s not like our community is pushing for Torquay back beach, or Anglesea, or Lorne. The total available beach for clothing optional use is miniscule in the grand scheme of things - please don’t take our tiny facilities away from us!

It’s been quiet on the western front for almost a couple of weeks now. We’ve been watching the SurfCoast Shire site and council meetings agendas for any activity and haven’t seen any so far. (Edit: Thanks to bedigonudey for noting “Minutes of Tourism Board meeting of 19th July are included in the Surf Coast agenda (page 46 +). They mention that the Council has sought support from Great Ocean Road Coast Committee for revocation of legal status of one of the beaches, but there is no indication that this was discussed by the Tourism Board.”)

In the interim, we’ve started to post the sample letters that may be handy if you want to craft your own letters to the various parties and want some ideas to work with. We do urge you to not simply copy these letters, but write your own and show why you want to keep our clothing-optional beaches the way they are.

We’ve also added an addresses page, with all the contact details you might need to start sending those letters. Again, please respect the individuals involved, and make sure you have your facts straight before sending any correspondence. We want our message to be clear and consistent:

• nudists using our clothing optional beaches are not the problem - nudists behave to a higher standard code of conduct, and in fact make the areas involved safer for everyone
• revoking the status of the beaches will not change the activities occuring off the beaches, in the toilets and the carparks - but better parking, lighting, and facilities will help the situation immensely
• naturism is tourism - when you have beaches attracting local, interstate and overseas visitors (particularly from Europe, where such a lifestyle is commonplace), attracting crowds will reduce inappropriate behaviour (since perverts hate crowds)
• Nudists/naturists are not any different to anyone else and have a right to a safe environment to pursue their interests just like any other community group. Not being “mainstream” does not preclude that right, and certainly does not give just cause for the community to not be involved in the process
• Predators hate attention - since the council’s present “safety” as their main platform on this issue, the only logical conculsion is that council should really be discussing ways to improve the facilities to increase nudist attendance (and tourist dollars) to these areas.

Nudists are a loyal, protective bunch - we hate undesireable and inappropriate behaviour more than regular beach users, not just because it is unacceptable but because it affects our image in the eyes of the public. We have higher standards of behaviour because we are making ourselves more vulnerable every time we take our culturally protective clothing off.

But most importantly, the councils cannot ignore the fact that the nudist community does exist within their domain of responsibility - we are not a new phenomenon, the beaches have legally been in use for over 20 years, probably longer than that beforehand. As a community group, we are entitled to the same due care and consideration as any other community group supported within the Shire. Anything less than that would be discriminatory.

We want to work with the councils to make the beaches better places to be, for nudists and textile users alike. What’s wrong with being known as the nudist capital of Victoria (or Australia)? People in this community are willing to travel for quality facilities (just ask the White Cockatoo resort, almost 2000kms north of Brisbane!!). The international tourists (particularly from Europe) will be here in droves. They’ll get more tourist dollars into the Shire coffers, and beach users will get a safer, more enjoyable experience in the community.

We encourage open discussion, and welcome anyone from the Shire to discuss the issues with us directly. We’d even welcome meeting actually on the beaches (although it is cold at the moment - we might be nudists, but we’d be happy to have that meeting clothed, we’re not idiots!!).