On any day, acres of tanned flesh are on view at Bondi Beach - men wearing the briefest of briefs, women sunbathing topless.
But it wasn't always so.
In the 1940s, legendary beach inspector Aub Laidlaw patrolled the golden sands, ruler in hand, ensuring that men's and women's
bathing costumes conformed to bylaws governing public decency.
Costumes had to cover at least three inches (7.6cm) of thigh and the entire front of the body, and wobbly bits had to be kept in place by robust straps.
Laidlaw frogmarched 50 or more people a week off the beach, including, in 1945, the first woman to brave Bondi in a bikini.
The fanatical Laidlaw retired in 1969, eight years after the bikini was legalised, but now his ghost is once again stalking Sydney's beaches.
A Christian fundamentalist politician, the Reverend Fred Nile, is calling for topless sunbathing to be outlawed, and he has received backing from several mainstream MPs.
Nudity is illegal in Australia except on designated beaches, but local councils consider toplessness acceptable. Nile wants the legislation to be tightened.
"The law should be clear," he said. "It must say: 'Exposure of women's breasts on beaches will be prohibited'."
His proposal elicited howls of protest from sun-loving Sydneysiders. Outraged callers deluged talkback radio stations and the ACT nudist club in Canberra, the national capital, warned that Australia risked appearing like a "haven for prudes".
But Nile, a veteran family values campaigner, was unrepentant, and several conservatives in the state parliament supported him.
Paul Gibson, a Labor MP, said topless women made people uncomfortable.
"If you're on the beach with the kids, do you want somebody with big knockers next to you?" he asked.
But many public figures poured scorn on Nile, and Sally Betts, the mayor responsible for Bondi, declared that toplessness was not nudity.
"Nude is when you've got no clothes on," she said.
- INDEPENDENT
