The Australia Letter is a weekly publication from our Australia bureau. Join to get it by e mail. This week’s situation is written by Natasha Frost, a reporter primarily based in Melbourne.
I had simply moved to New Zealand, at age 12, when a brand new buddy recommended that we slip out to the nook retailer (dairy in New Zealand English) for some sweet (lollies).
It wasn’t a heat day — July or August in Auckland hovers round 50 levels Fahrenheit — but once I stopped to placed on my sneakers, she checked out me with bemusement. Why would I want sneakers for a fast journey down the highway?
New Zealanders — and their Australian cousins — prefer to go barefoot. They’ll usually eschew footwear to go to the gasoline station, the grocery retailer, the playground and even the pub.
Seth Kugel, a author for The New York Instances, who visited New Zealand in 2012, put it like this: “Individuals stroll round barefoot. On the road. In supermarkets. Throughout. It’s not everybody, however it’s a major sufficient minority to be fairly putting and a bit disconcerting. Certain, metropolis sidewalks are clear. However they’re nonetheless metropolis sidewalks.”
(He was additionally stunned by a scarcity of tipping tradition, the wonderful distinction between a flat white and a latte and the preponderance of te reo Maori, the nation’s Indigenous language.)
In Perth, in Western Australia, at the very least one elementary faculty has a “sneakers non-compulsory” coverage, with directors citing claims that going barefoot “helped youngsters enhance posture, develop sensory consciousness and strengthen their toes and physique.” (Podiatrists are much less satisfied.)
And it’s not simply the youngsters. In 2019, Australia’s cricket group made headlines in England once they walked barefoot across the pitch in an try and seize “optimistic power popping out of the earth.”
“It was good,” the batsman Peter Handscomb advised The Instances of London. “You get a really feel of the grass in your toes, a little bit of grounding.”
There isn’t an easy motive behind why it’s so widespread to go barefoot. Some have attributed it to the affect of the 2 nations’ Indigenous cultures. Others see it as proof of a extra informal, actually extra down-to-earth tradition.
Chatting with the BBC in 2021, David Rowe, an emeritus professor of cultural analysis at Western Sydney College, supplied one other clarification: Going shoeless was a possibility for migrants from chilly northern Europe to rejoice a neater life in a hotter clime.
“The tradition developed of eradicating your sneakers as an indication that you simply’ve left the northern hemisphere behind,” he stated. “It is a new nation, a sun-loving, fun-loving place. You possibly can forged off your footwear and embrace the land.”
Earlier than transferring to Australia, Jordana Grey, who makes TikTok movies about life as a British expatriate on the Sunshine Coast, would by no means have gone barefoot, and even believed it was unlawful to drive with out sneakers on.
“However now, I like it,” she stated. “I prefer to drive with my gorilla toes gripping the pedals. Feels so liberating to be barefoot, and my toes are a lot more healthy.” (In the event you’re going to attempt it at house, she suggests doing the “toe take a look at” earlier than committing to stepping out of the automotive and onto sizzling tarmac.)
In a latest TikTok video, Grey described feeling a cheerful sense of “tradition shock” on discovering that many Australians merely go away their sneakers on the entryway to the seashore.
“They usually’re nonetheless there once you get again!” she stated, kicking off her white sandals.
Within the feedback, Australians weighed in on cases the place their sneakers had not, in actual fact, been there once they received again — Birkenstocks lifted by a ne’er-do-well, as an illustration, or a treasured pair of glitter jelly sneakers gone for good.
One commenter weighed in with an answer: “It’s received to be low cost Kmart sneakers. Footwear you don’t actually care about. It’s OK in the event that they get stolen, as a result of it’s completely acceptable to stroll across the seashore suburbs barefoot.”
At that time, you might as nicely neglect the sneakers within the first place.
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