Barefoot Is a Way of Life in New Zealand

“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),” now Melbourne-based journalist Natasha Frost writes for The New York Times.

“It wasn’t a warm day – July or August in Auckland hovers around 10 degrees – 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?

“New Zealanders – and their Australian cousins – like to go barefoot. They’ll often eschew footwear to go to the gas station, the grocery store, the playground and even the pub,” Frost writes.

“Speaking to the BBC in 2021, David Rowe, an emeritus professor of cultural research at Western Sydney University, offered [one] explanation: Going shoeless was an opportunity for migrants from chilly northern Europe to celebrate an easier life in a warmer clime.”

Original article by Natasha Frost, The New York Times, February 3, 2024.

Photo by Tim Marshall.