After a 2023 land survey revealed that the New South Wales Parks and Wildlife Service was the managing authority of Tyagarah Beach, an 800-meter stretch of Australian beach that has had clothing-optional status for 26 years, the NPWS sent a letter to the Byron Bay Shire Council to say it did not support its use as a nudist beach.
The council had declared part of the shoreline to be clothing-optional in 1998, and in the face of complaints in 2018, it rejected a recommendation to close the beach, instead installing CCTV cameras to provide extra security.
The NPWS wrote in December 2023 that nudity was “not consistent with the values the reserve is managed under” and it claimed that naturists were wandering off the designated beach area into the dunes, creating environmental problems.
It ordered the beach closed to nude use by April 8, with those caught naked after that facing fines as high as $1,100.
The news prompted Byron Naturists to stage a nude protest that attracted about 150 people and community opposition forced the service to agree to a period of “community consultation”.
Bradley Benham, who said he has been bathing nude on Byron Shire beaches since he was a child in the ’70s and ’80s, was hopeful that a meeting with the service could convince officials to change their position on Tyagarah Beach, adding that there are other nudist bathing sites managed by NPWS.
“I think it became clear to them [when we met] that they had opened a pretty big can of worms and it wasn’t something they could just get rid of so easily,” Benham said.
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