My Story

In 2014 my wife and I (Brendan) travelled all around Europe on a Top Deck Tour as most mid 20 year old's do at some point in their lives. Amongst the copious volumes of alcohol consumed and the daily sight seening we did, there was one particular moment that stood out. We were staying on a Croatian island called Pag and we came across a camp site to do our washing. On the wall of the laundry there was a site map and there was a large section of the map titled FKK. We went for a walk along the coastline while we waited for our washing to be finished and came across a number of families swimming, completely naked. Now I'd never been overly caring about nudity, but you don't see these sorts of things in Australia. Mum's, Dad's, Kids and Grandparents all swimming and sunbaking naked and they made it looked like it was the most normal thing in the world. Which of course it is when you think about it.. we just don't see it! This was the first seed planted about Naturism in my life. 

The page Get Naked Australia on Instagram and Facebook quickly took off. Within 2 weeks I received a message from a lady in NZ who wanted her shot to feature on the page as she had done the same thing. So I put it up. This then snowballed to receiving regular messages and emails off people wanting their photo shared. It took off. There was one particular post that stood out. I received an email from a lady who said that the Get Naked Australia concept had helped her reclaim her body. She wanted to share her photo and tell her story about the confidence she had gained through getting naked in nature as she had suffered years of abuse by her ex partner. I realised then that this fun trend has a pretty powerful message behind it. Getting naked in nature is a way to improve your body confidence. I put this message out to our followers and the page grew exponentially. Once we got to 10,000 followers the page got picked up in the media, notably the Illawarra Mercury. The article went viral all over the globe. I went on Radio. I went on TV talking about it. The page grew from 10,000 followers to 220,000 in a matter of weeks! I was just riding the wave and going with the flow preaching the naked in nature and body positivity messages. 

Throughout 2017 I continued to build the GNA Community. We regularly planned hikes around Sydney and skinny dipped in some amazing locations. People from all different walks of life were brought together and experienced something crazy together - skinny dipping with strangrs on the internet. Each person brought someone new along each time and the group continued to grow and grow with everyone feeling amazing with their new found confidence. The group, which at the time was run out of Facebook, expanded beyond Sydney to South East Queensland, Melbourne, Canberra and Far North Queensland. As fantastic as this was, it wasn't without it's challenges or criticisms. 

I quickly discovered that to bring people into the group outside of of the 'bring a friend' methodology that a screening process needed to be implemented to make sure that we were only including people with the same values as us. This meant a lot of angry men. Not trying to be sexist, just speaking from experience. The other thing I did was exclude people from existing 'nudist' communities as in my opinion it would potentially ruin what I had created. In hindsight, this may have been a bad call as I'm now surrounding by a plethora of people who are far more experienced nudies than I am who have helped shaped GNA into what it is today. However at the time, I had to trust my gut. I learnt that most of the good natured 'nudists' in the existing communities were the quiet ones, who shared a similar opinion of what I did when joining these communities. 

The Community grew and grew over the years. As did the social media pages and websites. We ran numerous Sydney Harbour Cruises, Camping Trips, Spa nights, Hikes and Swims, Cruises on the Gold Coast and even a 3 night cruise through the Whitsundays. I had cut back work hours to focus on building this community and was loving every minute of it. 

So where are we up to? Currently The GNA Community have very active groups in Sydney and South East Queensland. I am now employed by Barefoot Charters due to the popularity of our Sydney Harbour Cruises and we are running our 14th naked charter soon. We had over 150 people buy tickets this year. We no longer run official events due to the sheer volume of people attending but instead have chosen to support businesses that do and offer lessons of what we've learnt to help grow Naturism in Australia. 

This is the exciting part.

In the last 12 months, GNA has worked with Barefoot Charters, Public Sauna Co, Positively Bare and many other businesses to help promote Naturism and body positivity. We have seen Spencer Tunick come to Australia three times in the past 3 years and have thousands upon thousands of people turn up to be photographed naked. We have over 200 people coming to cruises each year. The European sauna sessions we are helping promote are becoming increasingly popular as people discover authentic European bathing. 

Further to this, I have started to work closer with members of the ANF (Australian Naturist Federation) and naturist venues to try and instill a more youthful and vibrant culture to these places before they disappear. 

We've taken some hits in the last few years but within our community the momentum is still high. Australia is waking up to the fact that nudity needn't be feared, it should be embraced and we feel at the helm of. it all. 

2025 and beyond should hopefully see us delve into new marketing strategies to help grow Naturism in Australia. We would love to see more businesses get on board with the idea of promotiong body positive/naturist events as we believe people are only better off as a result of these events. 

Who knows where we'll be in 10 years. Hopefully something as big as France4Naturism or partnering with Carnival Cruises to run our own 3 night nude cruise. Let's just see where the road takes us...