For regular readers of this site, you’ll know that a group of us head out every year to take part in Clean Up Australia Day, with Point Impossible beach as our chosen clean-up location. This will be our third (4th?) year of taking part, and every year we find a little less rubbish than the year before – testament to the care and dedication nudists have to looking after their beaches! Even the dunes area (where no-one should be anyway) seems cleaner each year.

This year is no different, with our group seeking (and likely getting) permission to enter the dunes area (clothed) for our clean-up efforts. We walk the beach as well, to make sure it is spic and span!! The carpark and surrounding areas also get the once-over.

The details this year are similar to prior years – meet at the carpark at 10am on Sunday 6th March. The plan is to work until around 1pm (if we need that long), followed by a sausage sizzle (bring a gold coin!).

Our clean-up site is registered already – head on over to http://www.cleanupaustraliaday.org.au/Pt+Impossible+Beach and register your details!

We’re looking for more supporters this year to come out and assist – while it’s great to see the regulars each year, a few new faces would be great!! If you use the beach and appreciate the facilities that we are lucky to have access to, then half a day out of your year is not much to ask!

A huge thanks to Jenni for being our organiser this year, your efforts are appreciated!

You may recall our previous posts regarding Skinbook, and how there seemed to be a definite trend toward social networking and nudism. Well, that trend seems set to continue, with Vita Nuda opening an Australian site at http://vitanudaaustralia.com. This could mean good things for the Australian nudist community, since there is definitely a lack of quality online nudist representation in our small pocket of the world (although we are looking to change a little of that, with the planned rework of this site and potentially others! More on that later…).

Vita Nuda focuses on the “youth” nudist demographic, catering specifically to the under 36 age group. Not sure why 36 was picked, probably seems old to your average 22yo! But we digress – sites like Vita Nuda are unlikely to gain much traction IRL, unless they can bridge that invisible chasm that sits between a young nudist comfortable in front of their computer, and actually getting them to leave the house and meet other people!! From our perspective, it seems pretty damn hard just to get them to leave the couch, nude or otherwise! Sorry, generalising…

Most of the people involved with this site are mid-30′s on average – we have a few younger, and a few older. And what we’ve noticed is that the youth of today are spending more time on their iPhone’s and Bold BBs than they do actually meeting new people! Sure, you see them hovering around town in their little groups, but how many of them can count more than 10 of their 1000′s of FB friends as being actual, real, “I’ll hang out with you, let’s catch up for coffeez” kind of friends?? It seems slightly sad, that the youth have so many friends and still seem somewhat alone… but we digress, not trying to solve cultural demographics and societal/technology trends in this post!! And we are generalising again, before you start flaming us!

But the point remains – building a website is great, but we’ve been there and done that. We hope Vita Nuda actually complete some of the plans they list on their site, because it’s all good for the nudist community if the youth can get energised enough to balance the older demographic we currently have and ensure nudism remains strong in Australia. It’s critical from a beach perspective too – we need nude people on the legal beaches every summer in bigger crowds if we don’t want to constantly risk losing them.

Good luck Vita Nuda, we wish you every success in getting the under 36′s excited about nudism. Here’s hoping it’s not another Skinbook, because according to the site “Once our new site is online, we will be auditing all users to ensure they fit our profile of membership”. And we all know how successful membership profiling is!

While naturist issues nationally are not our core interest here on a Victorian site, we still like to report when our interstate community members are in the news. In this case, Coolum naturist Mark Hayter has decided to get vocal about the fact that Alexandria Bay (A-Bay) is basically a rubber stamp away from being legal, if only the parties involved would stop passing the buck!!

According to this article:

“It’s very frustrating as it is such hypocrisy,” Mr Hayter said.

“They’re burying their head in the sand.

“We got permission from (former Premier) Peter Beattie, this was honoured by Anna Bligh who said the council should make an application. All Bob (Abbot, Sunshine Coast mayor) has to do is get off his bum and make it legal.

“It’s annoying that they pass the buck here, there and everywhere.”

It’s an interesting article and well worth a read – if anyone from the FBA is reading this site, perhaps this is a good opportunity to wade in and lend your support!! It is important to remember that there are NO legal CO beaches in Queensland, so even getting a rubber stamp on A-Bay probably has a little “precedent” baggage attached to it.

Bit of excitement around April 1 – it would seem that almost every year, nudity or nudists end up in the centre of some April Fools gag, like being nude is such a shock to society that it couldn’t be anything but a joke!!

Which is why we didn’t post this sooner, it was a normal enough article that it didn’t filter to the top of the pile until now!! Anyway, an article was posted on The Border Mail, titled “Nude Beach Planned for Albury” – apparently Albury Council submitted the “secret plans” to State and Federal Govts as part of a funding hunt for developments…

To quote the article:

Efforts by The Border Mail this week to obtain a copy of the submission were unsuccessful but a public servant said there was not much point in seeing it as “it contains only the bare essentials’’.

Boom tish!

But these quotes were much more interesting:

While the council had nothing to hide about the proposal, she agreed some residents might baulk at the idea of sunbakers and swimmers being told that clothing was optional.

“Really there is nothing to worry about a nudist beach that follows the proper etiquette laid down by the Free Beaches Australia organisation,’’ a council spokeswoman said.

“They have rules like ‘no unauthorised photographs’ and ‘nude but not lewd’.

Not bad “comments” in the grand scheme of things, nude beach etiquette is quite core to the philosophy and does result in well-behaved beaches!

There are a couple of comments in response from readers, but nothing significant – and The Border Mail posted a comment confirming it was an April Fools gag. Is it just us, or is there really nothing that outlandish about a suggestion for a clothing optional river “beach”?

You know, there has been cases in the past where April Fools gags have been used as a real technique to float a potentially controversial idea and test the response. In this case, it looked like one against, a few in favour, a few more with general comments/observations, and that was it!! We think it’s consistent with society’s view of nudity in general, the vast majority are basically ambivalent, and there is a tiny minority who might get up in arms!!

Go for it Albury Council, we think this “April Fools gag” is a good idea that passed the temperature test!! And thanks Border Mail for getting such a good idea some airtime!!

(As a side note, we can’t seem to locate Heywoods Bridge, although we suspect it is the bridge that joins Talgarno Rd (NSW) and Hume Weir Rd (Vic) – the best spots seem to be on the Victorian side, but the little island that belongs to NSW could be entirel CO!! Not that you can easily get there, as far as we can see! Can anyone confirm this was the area being referred to in the article?)

It’s that time of year again – Clean Up Australia Day 2010 is upon us, and it’s time to get yourself organised and lock the date in your diary. Every year we have a group of regulars who come along to clean up Pt Impossible, and this year we’d like to see some more users of this popular beach come along and show your support. So get yourself registered and get along for a good bit of fun (yes, it is cleaning, but we still enjoy ourselves!!)

The details are:
Website: Click Here!
Time: 9.30am – 12.00pm
Date: 7 March 2009

Similar to prior years, you don’t have to be nude on the day if you don’t want to be, and there are locations we clean up where you aren’t allowed to be nude anyway (like in the dunes, the carpark and outside the designated clothing optional areas). Most of the work is actually in the dunes, as the beach itself is always in pretty neat condition. As everyone is aware, the dunes are not part of the designated Clothing Optional area, but we still need to do our bit to make sure our beach and its surrounds are spic and span so that visitors can enjoy one of the best beaches on the coast!!

Thanks to our new organiser Dave for his efforts this year in organising CUAD – Go Dave!!

As a side note, it would be great to get Sunnyside registered for CUAD as well – is there anyone on that side of the bay that would be interested in registering the site, and doing basically the same thing that Dave is doing? There’s not much involved – register the location, have an address that some materials can be sent to, etc. This site will be happy to provide a new email address for the person willing to organise, just drop us a line and let us know!!