Well here we are again at the end of the official naturist season and at the end of our second year at Australian Sun and Health. And they said we wouldn’t make it :-) We have some great articles this issue… being winter we have articles from Alaska and Antartic; both written by Aussie travellers doing something a little different. We also have the next instalment of Jim’s sailing Adventure and Frank gives us a new article on travelling the outback. So, plenty to read… get stuck into it! There’s another interesting article this issue from Charles MacFarland. Charles looks at what he calls the new naturism. Charles says naturism is not declining but in fact it is changing. He says young people are getting involved by accepting nudity and using it to promote their causes such as the World Naked Bike Ride (against pollution and the over use of cars and just about everything else) and Running of the Nudes (against the annual Running of the Bulls).

This isn’t naturism as most of us would define it but it is nudity and people feeling comfortable enough with their bodies that they are willing to bare all in public.

I have been a ‘naturist’ in the formal sense since I was 25. After a quick visit to River Island I was hooked. I love naturism the way I choose to enjoy it. I love relaxing in a bush setting (whether that’s a naturist venue or just out in the middle of nowhere), without the need for clothes but how many younger people do? The majority of young people who are old enough not to have to follow their parents everywhere and those unmarried in their early 20’s are usually more interested in going to the pub than going camping at a nudist resort (or anywhere else). They want to socialise with people their own age and there just isn’t enough of them in our naturist ‘movement’. Naturism the way it is and the way we define it has little to offer this group of people; but that doesn’t really matter.

We target an older age group just by the type of venues we have and by the fact that many venues don’t allow singles anyway. There aren’t that many young married couples and families these days. People are waiting until they get older to take that leap. So we really can’t complain that younger people aren’t patronising our venues. They are more likely to visit a nudist venue if there is something there that appeals to their age group such as the recent Son of Trials 4WD competition held at River Island Nature Retreat. I went along expecting to see 20 or 30 cars but there had to be over 100. Each car had at least two people in them and many were younger people in their early 20’s and here they were at a nudist resort. But these sort of events are an exception.

Really, I like naturism the way it is and I think most of us do. We spend too much time worrying that there aren’t enough young naturists when we’re really not willing to change to attract them. The ‘age’ of naturism as we define it will always be the age of naturism. The practising of ‘new naturism’ as spoken of by Charles can only be a good thing as perhaps when these people get older and are more interested in ‘our’ type of naturism then they will visit our venues, go to our beaches and become the next generation of nudist, albeit again an older generation.

Kind Regards

Sarah Scriven,
Editor, Australian Sun and Health