If you want more details on the plans for our contribution to Clean Up Australia Day on 4 March at Pt Impossible, please read the following media release.

Click here to read media release

If you are planning on heading along, drop us a line here, or post on any of the various forums to let everyone know.

If anyone has any queries about the day at all, feel free to drop us a line here and we’ll do our best to help out!!

Another article recently hit the Geelong Independent, titled “Dunes to be fenced” (Click here to read the full article). The article is balanced, covers the topic from the perspective of three parties (GORCC, nudists, and the Sands Golf Course), and doesn’t introduce excessive emotion, sensationalism, or unverified content!! Although the opening line was a bit sensationalist since GORCC is installing the fences for environmental reasons (as stated in the article itself), we’re not going to get in a knot about it!!

Good work Jane!! We’ll never give the media a hard time about a balanced, factual article!!

It’s one of our most popular beaches, with hundreds of people using it every sunny day (and even the not so sunny ones!!), so it’s high time we all gave a little something back to Pt Impossible for being a great place to enjoy our freedom!!

Get along to Pt Impossible on Clean Up Australia Day on Sunday March 4 from 10am to 1pm and help us give Posso the “once over”!! You’ll get to meet some new people, and help improve the quality of the beach you love!!

Check out Clean Up Australia Day for more information

Note: (and this will be explained on the day also) The clothing optional area does not stretch into the dunes behind the beach, so the cleanup efforts in this area will be clothed. So all you people who also use the beach for morning walks/jogs, it doesn’t matter if you aren’t nudists - no excuses!!!

Update:An article has appeared in the Geelong Independent that mentions our efforts to clean up the beaches!! If you want to read the full article, Click Here

Most amusing in the article is Cr Humphrey’s comments (as always). Since no nude games were ever organised, the non-event could not have been a failure. As for the three people turning up, we guess he made that number up because he certainly wasn’t on the beach himself, but the webmaster of this site was and spoke personally to at least 70 people about various topics.

It’s good to see Cr Humphrey advocates the cleaning of the beaches with his “It wouldn’t hurt” blessing!! We’re yet to hear of his efforts to organise a clean up on his beloved White’s Beach, where police say there are more issues than Posso. Of course, Cr Humphrey (and anyone else for that matter) is welcome to help us clean up Posso - it’s a chance to get a first hand look in the dunes, something we’re sure most advocates of beach closure have never done!!

Let us know if you’re coming, we’d love to see you there!!

We wonder how the Geelong Independent is allowed to keep using that name, since only half of it appears to be true!! Of course, that’s only an opinion, but when it comes to the issue of clothing optional beaches, the journalists involved don’t seem to have completed their training in investigative journalism. However, they seem plenty savvy enough to see some sensationalism when it presents itself.

This is a big post people, so stick with us, we think it’s worth it!!

Take this latest gem from Jane Emerick - she did OK with her piece last month “Nudists’ look out on beach” (Click here to read), even managing to include quotes from both sides of the fence!! We don’t see that too often with the Independent, so kudos to Jane for trying to keep her piece balanced. But it couldn’t last, and we’re now wondering how this latest article could get it all so wrong??? Did Jane fail to complete the basics, or did the article fall into an altered reality hole on its way through the editorial process?

Before we get into our analysis, it should be noted that:

• Representatives from this website were not approached for comment
• No other representatives from any other nudist association were approached for comment (to our knowledge, happy to be corrected)
• The webmaster of this site was one of the attendees at the workshop, so comments made here have been checked and approved by someone actually present at the meeting (the nudist community actually has a QA process, because we like facts - they are hard to refute!!)
• The article has not been edited or modified for the purposes of this analysis (just in case you were wondering)

So, on to the article…

“Police on patrol but nudist outcome ‘twisted’” (Click here to read or Click here for an archive copy)

Authorities have twisted a workshop vote against nudism at Point Impossible in a bid to save the beach’s clothing-optional status, according to participants.

Haw haw haw, that’s hilarious - right off the bat this statement makes it appear like the “authorities” (by which we assume the article means GORCC, the police, and State Government DSE) don’t have an unbiased view of this issue!! I guess the police do indeed have a bias - to keep the community safe!! On that basis, surely if this beach was such a dangerous place like Cr Humphrey makes out, the police would be the first to indicate it should be closed?? So how did they twist the vote again? The argument is logically inconsistent for all of the involved “authorities”.

Surf Coast Community and Ratepayers Association’s Lyn Smith and councillor Ron Humphrey said the shire’s public statement on the outcome of the workshop had omitted its vote in support of banning nudists.

Interestingly, the actual vote result wasn’t reported at all in the press release. That may have been deliberate, we’re not sure the reasoning. Just for the record though, the basis for the workshop was to firstly define the issues, then work through a process of identifying possible solutions to those issues. And it is safe to say that not one single issue identified and agreed by workshop participants was resolved by closing the beach to nudists.

That’s why the media release lists the high level concepts like signage, enforcement, community partnerships, and environmental management - these things DO go a long way towards solving the issues.

Sixteen representatives of nudists, the public, Surf Coast Shire, Great Ocean Road Coast Committee, police and State Government attended the workshop to address concerns about men meeting in dunes behind the beach for sex.

Phew, for a minute there we thought there was an issue on the legal clothing optional beach that we didn’t know about. Because everyone knows that the clothing optional beach starts at the foot of the dunes and stretches offshore for 100m or so. The area mentioned above is not actually the clothing optional beach, it’s the dunes behind the beach!! So how is banning nudists on the legal beach going to solve a problem not on the beach? Should we mention the problems in the car park while we’re at it? What about the problems in the Torquay back beach car park? How about the tunnels/cave dug in the dunes at White’s Beach?

After the workshop shire chief executive officer Peter Bollen put out a press release saying: “The majority did not want to advocate for the State Government to revoke the optional dress status without first trying to improve behaviour through the measures identified”.

This is correct, the MAJORITY did not want revocation of clothing optional status. We’re not going to go into exact numbers here, but phrases like “vast majority”, “almost all”, and “lions share” would all be suitable ways to describe the size of the majority in favour of keeping the beach CO and trying alternative measures first!!

But Mrs Smith said she could “not believe” the published findings of the workshop.

“(The press release) didn’t cover the main thing, which was that the majority at the meeting followed the council view that the clothing-optional status should be removed,” she said.

Did the independent forget that small, but important, aspect of journalism called “verification”??? Because this statement is factually incorrect on two levels - firstly that it is a council view that the CO status should be revoked (it’s only the view of one councilor who managed to sneak through a motion when those who would have voted against it were absent!!).

Secondly, the majority at the meeting were NOT of the view that the CO status be removed. This is obviously a misquote, since we’re sure the members of the ratepayers association would be greatly concerned that their representative would make such distorted statements. We assume Lyn is displeased that the facts have been so obviously ignored (hey, it’s happened to us before). Feel free to contact us here Lyn, if you don’t believe you’ve been misquoted, since the results of every vote and discussion were so clear and unambiguous!!

“The agreed outcomes (in the statement) were not even agreed upon.

Since the agreed outcomes were prepared by the independent mediator, and the content of the media release was approved by all attendees prior to its release, it’s staggering that one of the attendees has only now decided the findings were not agreed upon!!

Does this mean the opponents of the CO beach think that signage, enforcement and community partnerships are NOT a good idea? The ratepayers association does not want the users of the beach to work with council and police to create a safer environment? Amazing…

“Some of the stuff in the press release wasn’t even discussed.”

As mentioned above, the media release was pre-approved by the attendees prior to release. It’s no good crying foul now, when there was plenty of opportunity to voice concerns during the media release approval stage.

Cr Humphrey called the meeting a “waste of ratepayers’ money”.

We may have had a bit of uncontrolled laughter arise from this one - does Cr Humphrey not view this entire debacle a waste of ratepayers money? Since he was the one that started this process, surely he knew he was potentially going to cost ratepayers a bundle simply by initiating the process? Or did he naively think the fight wouldn’t happen?

We’re scared to think what Cr Humphrey’s poorly worded, unresearched, rhetorical motion has cost everyone over the last 8 months in time, effort and actual dollars. The Geelong Advertiser poll said it all - 91% of people think CO beaches should be kept open.

“We never even went to the scene of the crime,” he said.

“If we went down to the beach we would have seen orgies.

“If it’s a crime scene then you examine the site. We shouldn’t have been making decisions without seeing the site.”

We don’t even know how to being analysing these statements, the concepts seem confused and emotive. For a start, it’s not a crime scene. Everyone acknowledged that inappropriate behaviour had occurred in the dunes behind many beaches - perhaps Cr Humphrey means White’s Beach when he is referring to the “crime scene”, since the police stated in the workshop that they had more problems with that beach than Pt Impossible.

“Orgies”? The day of the workshop was actually quite windy and not overly warm, so we predict we would have seen 2 dog walkers and maybe a runner or two. We also believe Cr Humphrey has never actually set foot on the beach itself, although a number of offers have been made to meet with him on the beach itself and discuss the issues - all of which were met with complete silence (as expected).

Cr Humphrey said the meeting had disregarded a letter from council to the Planning Minister in June asking for the Government to remove the beach’s clothing-optional status.

“Last year we asked for the removal of the clothing optional status because of the location of the beach, development and future development,” he said.

“The whole issue of potential growth wasn’t even addressed at the meeting.”

Actually it was one of the first issues discussed, specifically in relation to the use of Southside as well. Representatives of the nudist associations kept detailed notes of the discussion - it appears these notes are more detailed than Cr Humphrey’s. The growth discussion also caused some divergence onto the topic of off-leash dog walking restrictions, and the growth of the area around White’s Beach. The topic did not last long though - it was acknowledged that area growth was important, and could mean changes would be required for facilities (roads,toilets, lighting).

It should also be noted that Cr Humphrey uses a variety of justifications for closing the beach, and presents them in any convenient order he likes. We first became aware of the “urban growth” argument in Sept 06, approx 2 months after the original motion. So the Minister was not requested to revoke CO status based on growth at all.

The statement said the meeting had agreed on a range of actions to address “behaviour” at Point Impossible.

The actions included supplying Torquay Police with four-wheel-drive vehicles to patrol the beach and erecting keep-out signs and fences along the dunes.

These actions are listed in the press release, as agreed by attendees at the workshop. For a full review of the press release, refer to previous posts on this site. The recommendations are such a positive for beach safety and management that not even the opponents of the CO beach can argue against their benefits.

The Independent revealed last week that Great Ocean Road Coast Committee had begun work on “dune rehabilitation” at Point Impossible, including fences and keep-out signs.

Fantastic!! The process has started…

The shire will put a summary of workshop outcomes on display for public comment until March 9.

A shire spokesperson said council would review feedback before reporting back to the Planning Minister on the public’s input.

Former Planning Minister Rob Hulls told council last year to run community consultation before he would consider the shire’s application for a ban on nudists at Point Impossible.

Apologies for the length of this post, but the Geelong Independent article is one of the worst we’ve had to respond to. We commented previously on our willingness to pursue journalists and newspapers who we believe are not upholding their ethical responsibilities in investigative reporting. Articles like this are not improving that view.

We urge everyone to respond to the Surf Coast Shire workshop request for comments before 9 March. Read the press release (Click here to open PDF) and write in using the contact information at the end. We’ve been doing the hard work for months, so it would be great if everyone who reads this could give us a few minutes to write a letter of support.

In an article in today’s Geelong Advertiser, the opening paragraph seemed to sum of the media’s view of the ongoing battle of Pt Impossible:

Nudists have won their battle to bare all on Torquay’s Point Impossible beach

Free Beaches Australia President Anita Grigg’s comment in the article nicely summed up why the nudist community was willing to fight hard to keep the beach open to legitimate nudists:

“Why should somebody using the beach legitmately have the privilege taken off them because of other people using it inappropriately?”

We agree completely - the issue was never about the nudists, although supporters of the beach closure tried to link all the usual beach problems without justification. Interestingly, many comments about inappropriate behaviour were never even focussed on Pt Impossible, as acknowledged by Surf Coast Police Inspector Bill Mathers:

… most incidents of offensive behaviour reported did not happen at Pt Impossible but adjoining beaches.

People familiar with the adjoining beaches would also be aware of the link to one of the supporters of beach closure.

We’re pleased that common sense prevailed, but we aren’t stopping there. The Victorian nudist community now needs to show that keeping the beach open was worth the fight - become involved, even if it only means sending us a note to say hi and let us know you support our efforts. We want the beaches to not only stay open, but to become more attractive to families and couples, and much less attractive to the undesirables.

If you know someone who behaves inappropriately, or you are one of those people, you can rest assured that the community will make it very hard for that kind of behaviour to continue - and legitmate nudists now have the support of the authorities and the relevant state government departments. You are more than welcome to take your activities elsewhere!!

If you want to read the full article, Click here to read