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The Australia Letter<\/em><\/a> is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. <\/em>Sign up<\/em><\/a> to get it by email. <\/em><\/p>\n I had just moved to New Zealand, at age 12, when a new friend suggested that we slip out to the corner store (dairy in New Zealand English) for some candy (lollies).<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t a warm day \u2014 July or August in Auckland hovers around 50 degrees Fahrenheit \u2014 yet when I stopped to put on my shoes, she looked at me with bemusement. Why would I need shoes for a quick trip down the road?<\/p>\n New Zealanders \u2014 and their Australian cousins \u2014 like to go barefoot. They\u2019ll often eschew footwear to go to the gas station, the grocery store, the playground and even the pub.<\/p>\n Seth Kugel, a writer for The New York Times, who visited New Zealand in 2012, put it like this<\/a>: \u201cPeople walk around barefoot. On the street. In supermarkets. All over. It\u2019s not everyone, but it\u2019s a significant enough minority to be quite striking and a bit disconcerting. Sure, city sidewalks are clean. But they\u2019re still city sidewalks.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n (He was also surprised by a lack of tipping culture, the fine distinction between a flat white and a latte and the preponderance of te reo Maori, the country\u2019s Indigenous language.)<\/p>\n In Perth, in Western Australia, at least one elementary school has a \u201cshoes optional\u201d policy<\/a>, with administrators citing claims that going barefoot \u201chelped children improve posture, develop sensory awareness and strengthen their feet and body.\u201d (Podiatrists are less convinced.)<\/p>\n And it\u2019s not just the kids. In 2019, Australia\u2019s cricket team made headlines in England when they walked barefoot around the pitch in an attempt to capture \u201cpositive energy coming out of the earth.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt was nice,\u201d the batsman Peter Handscomb told The Times of London<\/a>. \u201cYou get a feel of the grass on your feet, a bit of grounding.\u201d<\/p>\n There isn\u2019t a straightforward reason behind why it\u2019s so common to go barefoot. Some have attributed it to the influence of the two nations\u2019 Indigenous cultures. Others see it as evidence of a more casual, literally more down-to-earth culture.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Speaking to the BBC in 2021<\/a>, David Rowe, an emeritus professor of cultural research at Western Sydney University, offered another explanation: Going shoeless was an opportunity for migrants from chilly northern Europe to celebrate an easier life in a warmer clime.<\/p>\n \u201cThe culture developed of removing your shoes as a sign that you\u2019ve left the northern hemisphere behind,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is a new country, a sun-loving, fun-loving place. You can cast off your footwear and embrace the land.\u201d<\/p>\n Before moving to Australia, Jordana Gray, who makes TikTok videos about life as a British expatriate on the Sunshine Coast, would never have gone barefoot, and even believed it was illegal to drive without shoes on.<\/p>\n \u201cBut now, I love it,\u201d she said. \u201cI like to drive with my gorilla toes gripping the pedals. Feels so freeing to be barefoot, and my feet are so much healthier.\u201d (If you\u2019re going to try it at home, she suggests doing the \u201ctoe test\u201d before committing to stepping out of the car and onto hot tarmac.)<\/p>\n In a recent TikTok video<\/a>, Gray described feeling a happy sense of \u201cculture shock\u201d on discovering that many Australians simply leave their shoes at the entryway to the beach.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cAnd they\u2019re still there when you get back!\u201d she said, kicking off her white sandals.<\/p>\n In the comments, Australians weighed in on instances where their shoes had not, in fact, been there when they got back \u2014 Birkenstocks lifted by a ne\u2019er-do-well, for instance, or a treasured pair of glitter jelly shoes gone for good.<\/p>\n One commenter weighed in with a solution: \u201cIt\u2019s got to be cheap Kmart shoes. Shoes you don\u2019t really care about. It\u2019s OK if they get stolen, because it\u2019s totally acceptable to walk around the beach suburbs barefoot.\u201d<\/p>\n At that point, you may as well forget the shoes in the first place.<\/p>\n Here are the week\u2019s stories.<\/p>\n Are you enjoying our Australia bureau dispatches?<\/strong> Like this email?<\/strong>
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