As the UK heads towards the end of their apparently awesome summer, always vocal LadyGod1va wrote a long and detailed post about the notion of “Naturist police”. Definitely read the entire post, it is worth it. Here are a few snippets to give you a sample…

Naturists are obviously no different than any other group of people, you are going to get all mixture of characters, the good, bad and the ugly. However when the same happens in other social groups they perhaps are not tarred with a general image as much as naturists seems to be.

Certainly the same here in Australia, where the inappropriate behaviour we sometimes see and hear about on our beaches is associated with the extremely well behaved nudist community…

The ‘serious’ naturists tend to seek the freedom of naturists clubs through the protection they offer, however this doesn’t protect them from being related to the pervert naturists who do nothing but harm naturism.

We’ve all lamented the “tarred with the same brush” issue of unfair association, but has anyone come up with viable options that might help alleviate the issue?? Readers of this site haven’t, since we have quite a large member base but very low activity on the comments!! C’mon people!!

But in the UK, the police force (the MET) have a volunteer branch, designed to strengthen relationships between the community and police. According to LadyGod1va:

…an idea being discussed is to create a volunteer naturist special police constables. Most of you probably think it cannot be done, too complicated, too expensive not enough support, that is to be expected. My view is that unless you debate an idea, there is no chance of anything being done.

While the UK MET has the facility to at least engage with community groups like this, we’re not sure such flexibility would exist in Australia. It might be nice if such options were available though – but the real question is, would anyone actually become a volunteer and help fight the good fight??

Read the entire article, there’s some interesting observations and commentary in there!

How amusing!! According to this article from over in Austria, nude hikers don’t mind being seen nude on the hiking trail, but aren’t so keen about being seen getting changed – fair enough too!!

According to the article:

“First we wanted people to recognise our right to walk as Nature intended man to be. Then we wanted to stop people gawping at us while we are undressing. It’s very uncomfortable,” said one organiser.

Dare we dream of the day when our main challenge is getting some nude hiking changing facilities!!

When this site was first created, it was designed to simply be a static page with a few links on it – a place for people to start their search into the CO beaches and other locations around Victoria. We updated the site to add a heap more functionality just as the beach fight commenced in the middle of 2006. Now that things have settled down, and our beaches appear safe (for the time being, touch wood!), we’re wondering where to next with the site?

The original name and domain of the site was chosen because of the lack of information about the two groups that are supposed to representing nudists in Victoria – the Victorian branch of the Free Beach Association (no longer in existence) and the Nudist Association of Victoria (still exists, not actively operated) – hence the acronym FBANAVic! But is it still accurate or useful?

And on the flip side, should this site be rolled into one of the national efforts? There’s a couple of national sites out there, but we’ve always wondered about how much they focus on the states outside their home base (which we believe are NSW and QLD).

So, here we are, about to head into summer, and we’re wondering how many readers are actually interested in this site taking on the next evolution? Currently the site has a good number of registered users, and we’re getting reasonable hits daily, but many of those are overseas and not local. The site has always been free and will remain that way, but locating and posting suitable content and posting it is time consuming, and we’re only a small admin team.

We’re interested in your thoughts – perhaps the next month or so will be telling, based on how much feedback we receive. We’re happy to build and launch a new site, with more news and smoother functionality (since this site is a little clunky now, and the backend is getting a bit dated). We’re also happy to consider new domain names that better represent our overall goal – to provide information to Victorians about nudism in our great state, particularly regarding our 4 legal beaches.

Over to you, dear readers – please drop us a line and let us know what you think!!

Experiencing a distinct sense of deja vu, we were unhappy to read that other beaches around the world are fighting to save their beaches just like we had to!! Holkham Bay is on the north coast of Norfolk, a large official beach that has won awards in years gone by. But the beach appears to be under threat at the moment, apparently due to very similar issues we faced on our beaches here!

In a Metro UK article, the article started strongly:

A number of visitors have reported lewd activity at the dedicated naturist beach at Holkham Bay, Norfolk, with one campaigner posting: ‘My last three visits to the beach have seen me propositioned twice. I’ve witnessed gay sex in the sand dunes and men walking around ‘playing’.

What’s new in this particular beach battle is that the fight has moved online. According to an article in the Yorkshire Evening Post:

A campaign has been launched on a social networking site calling for the closure of a nudist beach after claims it has become a “haven for swingers and perverts”.
The group on Facebook was set up after reports that people had witnessed gay sex in sand dunes in the upmarket resort of Holkham Bay, Norfolk.

We’ll be keeping an eye on this one, and will be keen to see a resolution that allows the nudists to retain access to the beach, and the undesirable element removed!! You have our support, Holkham Bay!

Update: It would seem police are following up the inappropriate behaviour being reported at Holkham Bay. According to the article on EADT24:

Andrew Welch, of British Naturism, stressed the incidents did not involve “genuine naturists’’.

“This type of thing is rare but we are aware of these reports,’’ he said.

Sounds familiar, no?