Kiwis have been slipping out of their clothes beside the water for as long as there have been Kiwis. Swimsuits came later, and so did the arguments about them. This is the short version of how a few towels on the sand became a movement.
Before the togs
In colonial New Zealand, swimming naked was simply how most people swam. Through the 1860s and 70s it was common around the Waitematā and the Auckland waterfront, and newspapers from Wellington to Wanganui filled with letters complaining about naked boys in rivers and harbours.
The law was less excited than the letter writers. In 1882 a Wanganui man took a swimming boy's clothes, and the Magistrate fined him, ruling he "was not entitled to remove clothing." In 1906 a Castlecliff Magistrate found there was no penalty for bathing naked in a public place at all.
Not everyone went quietly. In 1901, when the Rotorua Sanatorium Baths insisted on costumes, men who were thrown out came back with their trunks tied around their necks. By 1910, though, police acted on council complaints at Lyall Bay, and the age of the compulsory costume had arrived.
The sun clubs
With beaches covered up, naturists moved behind the hedges. Eric Flint's Kaurimu in Auckland began in 1944, and clubs soon followed around the country: the Wellington Sun & Health Society, the Auckland Outdoor Health Club, Pine Glades, and sun clubs in Canterbury, Otago, Wanganui, the Waikato and Hawke's Bay.
The first National Rally was held in Wanganui in February 1953, and in May 1956 the clubs launched their own magazine, the forerunner of today's gonatural. By 1965 the New Zealand Sunbathing Association counted ten clubs and more than 600 members. That year, an article in a police training school magazine even concluded:
"The law's attitude to naturism is one of understanding."
Taking on the censors
Being understood by the police was one thing; getting past Customs was another. In the 1950s Customs seized nudist magazines at the border, and the movement spent years negotiating with the Justice and Customs Departments. A formal agreement on importing overseas nudist magazines was published in 1965.
The New Zealand magazine kept pushing too. In 1969 the first issue with unretouched photographs was sent to the Department of Justice for a ruling, and in 1970 the answer came back positive.
Back to the beach
Meanwhile the hippies had quietly rediscovered skinny-dipping, at what one history calls "second tier" beaches from Kaitaia to Bluff, mostly without much hindrance. From the early 1970s Emiel Roland campaigned for free beaches, and in July 1975 the Free Beach Group held its first meeting at the Howick home of Robin and Jenny Hoare. Its newsletter set out to report on places to go and to publicise any legal developments for "free range" naturists.
There were skirmishes. In the late 1970s the Waipu County Women's Institute tried to have sunbathers banned from Uretiti Beach in Northland, and failed. In 1981, when Parliament called for submissions on the Summary Offences Bill, naturists made their case. By the mid-1980s the Free Beach Group had become an associate member of the national federation.
Holding the ground
In 1992 Nobilangelo Ceremalus was convicted for being naked at Fitzpatrick Bay on Auckland's North Shore. He refused to be filmed, so a TV crew filmed him secretly from above the beach. He won his appeal against the conviction in 1995.
Beaches came and went. Pohutukawa Bay at the north end of Long Bay grew busier through the 1990s, as did Peka Peka on the Kapiti Coast, while Auckland's Ladies Bay declined and St Leonards faced a local backlash. New venues opened too, from Aoraki Naturally at Lake Tekapo in 1996 to Wai-natur near Blenheim in 2006.
In 1998 the national body became the New Zealand Naturist Federation. In 2003 a cheeky TV dare by Marc Ellis gave the world National Nude Day. In 2008 the Free Beach Group took its current name, Free Beaches New Zealand.
Where that leaves us
New Zealand has no officially designated nude beaches. What it has is a network of long-standing, traditionally clothing-optional spots, kept that way by people who are discreet, considerate and respectful of others. Free Beaches NZ is still the group that will stand behind members who get into strife simply for being naked.
Abridged from the history pages of Free Beaches NZ, which draw on New Zealand Naturist (now gonatural) magazine and the Free Beach Group newsletters. Read the full history there.