Legal Matters

So I had an interesting conversation with park rangers this morning who’d had complaints of somebody being naked on the beach.

I’d just finished a quick swim and was heading back to the car when they called me over.

I told them I skinny dipped at the beach frequently and they explained although they understood the naturist intent, they had received complaints about somebody walking naked on the beach.

Apparently this is considered to be parading. They also mentioned a complaint about somebody walking naked on the tracks there, but that wasn’t me. Apparently that’s considered something else again.

So the advice was if I wanted to skinny dip there, walk to the waters edge, disrobe then swim. Do the reverse coming back.

I suspect that campers at the far end of the beach must have put in a complaint.

I haven’t been down to the beach in a while. This last week however there have been campers down there.

I didn’t want a massive confrontation and they were being pretty calm and reasonable so I didn’t feel the need to get up on a high horse and start spouting the law at them.

No doubt the fact it’s a council controlled park probably influences the dynamics.

There’s a fair amount of beach on the other side of the peninsula that isn’t council controlled so my rights there are probably a bit more unrestricted.

It makes me think that Free Beaches NZ still has work to do.

Compared to the kite surfers down there that create a hazard for swimmers by dominating the beach at high speeds. Also terrorising the endangered dotterels who see them as birds of prey. A bit of nudity isn’t doing anyone any harm.

99% of the time the beach is empty.

I’m not angry about it. Just very disappointed that in spite of the human bill of rights public nudity is still considered a form of exhibitionism.