Why barefoot culture makes Kiwis the best travellers

The value of physically experiencing environments

FEATURE | ISSUE THREE | WHENUA

Written by Polly Wenlock she/her | @p0lly2001 | Contributing Writer

Australia looks to be a land of sun-baked influencers. 

It looks like 

rolling surf, 

blue skies, 

gold sand. 

It looks just like the reels you scroll endlessly and wistfully on your 30-minute lunch break.

But how does Australia feel? 

Australia feels like sand in every crevice, under every nail. 

Australia sounds like the chatter of kookaburra and the buzz of light rail as day breaks. 

Australia smells like overfilled trash cans on public beaches, baking their unfortunate aromas in the midday sun.

These, the sensations beyond sight, are the things that tell me I’m in Australia, that my environment has changed. 

I recently had the opportunity to travel to Aus for the first time as part of a sports event. 

I had seen images of Australia right across my social media in advance of the trip, had what I was to see pre-experienced, explained, photographed, videoed, and spoiled in the loaning of a thousand other eyes on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok. 

I also recently viewed a Valid crashout video on this same experience. 

One creator shared a video complaining he was upset that his opportunity to see Mt Everest’s summit for the first time had been ruined by the fact he’d experienced it through someone else’s experience; through a screen. 

In some way, this message chimed with me. 

In another, it made me consider the value of physical and other-than-sight sensorial interaction with one’s environment, and the application of the senses in travel, which become newly significant in our engagement with technology. 

In our screen-based age, it is not uncommon to see awe-inspiring scenes plastered across socials, advertising, media. With images of different locations so accessible and promoted, what then differentiated the value of seeing a place through one’s own eyes rather than seeing a place through one’s own eyes on a screen? 

Simply put, the difference comes down to your other senses and their physical engagement in an environment. 

You can hear the difference in wildlife, smell the difference in cuisine, feel the warm/cold/soft/hard/concreted/carpeted/tiled ground underneath your feet. 

This, the physical sensation of travel, isn’t just a pleasantry, nay, I’d argue it’s essential as a means of clueing your body in on the fact you have travelled. 

In my experience, I travelled to Australia for sports. My sport falls in the realm of surf life-saving, meaning that beyond being David Hasselhoff ripped with heroic abilities (all jokes… mostly), I am largely barefoot when heading to and from competition. 

Competing for this sport while in Australia, I was able to have a real physical grounding in a new environment. 

Am I saying go have a barefoot interaction with a heroin needle on Venice Beach just to say you’ve been to LA? 

No…Unless that’s the kind of trip you’re desiring…

Rather, I’m simply suggesting that when sight becomes a sense less valuable due to the surplus of images of nature available to us, and in light of brand and social-cultural globalisation, the value of travel now lies in physical experience of new environments. 

Furthermore, physical immersion is newly essential in letting your body know that it has travelled. 

Way-back-when, in our great-great-grandparents time, travel took time. Time allowed the body to process said travel. Weeks to months onboard a vessel, hearing the waves lap against the bow, smelling the briny air, feeling the temperature gradually change as you move across zones. 

In the present era of travel, the icy tundras of Wellington’s south coast can be swapped for the sunbaked sands of Sydney’s northern beaches in less time taken than a bus replacement for any NZ commuter line service. 

Sure, you’re conscious and aware through sight and knowledge of having travelled (hopefully), but given the ease of accessing video and photo documentation of global spots, it comes down to your bodily sensorial experience to clue you into the change of environment. 

If your body isn’t permitted the time to physically realise a new environment, and your activity in this environment comes down to the same screen-based behaviours as persist at home - tapping on glass rather than touching grass - will it even realise a change of environment?

It’s worth realising also then, the value of physical immersion in your home environment, to then sense the difference provided by travel. 

 Across differing locations - home, work and travel - much creativity, communication, work, and leisure now takes place across a backlit handheld box. 

The end product of your device usage may be different - hell, you may be engaging in any variety of activity as wide-ranging as writing a screenplay or playing Moshi Monsters - but the physical experience undertaken is the same, 

pared back to its basic sensation: Fingers swiping on a glass panel. 

Physically immersing yourself in your environment at home allows your mind and body to relax, but also provides a standard against which to experience travel, in the same way physically and sensorally engaged travel allows you to freshly experience home. 

On the tail end of my own travel, how does home feel? 

To me, Aotearoa’s environment is: 

The sweet smell of cow manure permeating from the vehicle deck of a Bluebridge crossing, 

The wet feel of tent fabric when dew falls at dawn, 

The lonely night call of one morepork transitioning to the morning buzz of 100 fizzing cicadas.