50 years starkers: Nudies remember Maslin Beach’s highs and lows on historic anniversary
Nudies are celebrating 50 years of a storied, notorious beach in SA’s south which has seen it all. It inspired a film and even hosted a naked Olympics after South Aussie premier Don Dunstan declared it Australia’s first legal nude beach on February 14, 1975.
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Since February 14, 1975, Maslin Beach has been a haven for bodily freedom to some, a curiosity to others, home to the famous nude Olympics, the inspiration for a film and – unfortunately – a favourite haunt of perverts.
When South Australian premier Don Dunstan announced part of Maslins would legally become “clothing optional”, he said his government made the decision because numbers of nude bathers had already been rising at the beach, creating difficulties for police.
On Sunday, a crew of dedicated nudies will gather at the stunning beach 40km south of Adelaide to celebrate half a century since it all became legal.
Chris Soulidis, now 66, said he remembered attending the beach that day with friends when he was 16, along with hundreds of others.
Mr Soulidis went starkers, but he said most beachgoers had been fully clothed.
“You thought, ‘this is really weird’,” he said. “People are there sunbathing, and then there’s hordes of people walking up and down just to have a sticky beak.
“(My friends and I) just got our driver’s licenses. We could drive and said, ‘Let’s go down there. This is a monumental occasion, it’s legal, let’s do it.’”
Naked families and large groups flocked there throughout the 70s and 80s, and the beach’s fame grew from 1983 with the start of the annual Maslin Beach Nude Olympics.
Hundreds of nudies competed in the sack race, three-legged race and best bum competition.
Australian Naturist Federation president Shazz Weaver, 61, said the games had been “a great meeting place for people” and the best bum was “always contentious”.
“Whoever wanted to be a part of it would stand with a long piece of hessian across their back, so all you could see was their legs and their bums,” she said.
“It just got us all together and we laughed our heads off.”
Ms Weaver, who has been frequenting Maslins for 40 years, said many people thought nudists were “old, floppy people”.
“But I think it’s more that people over the age of 45 don’t care what people think and want to do what they want to do,” she said.
She admitted perverts were a constant problem at Maslins and tainted the beach’s reputation.
“People who are staring and looking are not nudists, they’re coming down just to have a bloody look and that’s the way it is,” she said.
In 1997, the cinematic release of Maslin Beach only advanced the beach’s reputation as a bit sleazy.
The film, which became a late night TV staple, followed a set of romantic entanglements among Maslins beachgoers on a summer day, but it is probably best remembered for the characters’ various states of undress.
Maslins regular Tracey Phillips, 58, said it misrepresented the spot, but some parts were accurate, like the inclusion of a yellow and white Suzuki that was driven on the beach selling ice cream and snacks.
She said the nude section is less popular today, especially with families.
Shortly before the Covid pandemic, the nude games fizzled out because not enough nudies volunteered to run the event.
The games had already lost some lustre in 2013 when the Australian Olympics Committee issued legal threats to the organisers, forcing them to drop the word “Olympics” and use a new name, the Pilawarren Maslin Beach Nude Games.
Ms Weaver said organisers today were struggling to revive it because insurance companies would not insure a nude event.
The beach’s golden age may have passed, but it still draws nudist groups and regular joes who just want to feel the sun on their privates.
When the Sunday Mail visited on the 50-year anniversary on Friday, a naked man was strolling happily with a fully clothed woman and a poodle, in a curious gender reversal of the Kanye West and Bianca Censori dynamic.
The man, Steven, said his partner Elena normally went unclad but had covered up because of the cold wind and a sore throat.
“(Going nude) makes me feel comfortable, freer; it eliminates a whole layer of concealment,” he said.
In its editorial on February 14, 1975, The Advertiser said the nude beach was a “logical, if ultimate, extension of the move from neck-to-knee outfits to the briefest of bikinis and trunks”.
“If bathers go out of date how long will clothes last? But that, it might be hoped, is in the future,” the editorial said.
But Elena said she believed the public’s attitude to nudity – 2025 Grammys aside – had gone the opposite way.
“It would be good if people tried to be more positive about it,” she said. “We’ve become much more conservative.”
Originally published as 50 years starkers: Nudies remember Maslin Beach’s highs and lows on historic anniversary
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