‘This is Australia, we're surrounded by water': how a nation of strong swimmers is losing its way

The Guardian

29-03-2025

Exhaustion follows panic as the victim's head dips below the surface. Unable to hold their breath any longer, a desperate, involuntary gasp for air sends water surging down their airways. Without oxygen, the heart stops within minutes.
Drowning was the fate of 104 people who died in waterways and swimming pools across Australia this summer past.
Beach drownings tarnished December. In February, the body of a nine-year-old girl was pulled from a backyard pool in south-west Sydney. Last week ambulances were dispatched to a dam north of Melbourne. A toddler was found unresponsive and could not be revived.
Despite Australia's global reputation as a nation of swimmers and surfers, experts familiar with its public learn-to-swim sector – a 'safety net' that once ensured few Australian children forwent learning to swim – say its systemic erosion is leaving a growing number of people unprepared to safely navigate Australia's beaches and backyard pools.
The consequences are as tragic as they are predictable: in the past decade, drowning rates have crept upwards, says Justin Scarr, the chief executive of Royal Life Saving Australia. A report authored by the organisation found nearly half of year six students can't swim 50m – the national benchmark and 'bare minimum' required to survive in the water and fully take part in the pleasures of Australia's water-borne society.
From the 1880s swimming lessons were a mandated part of the Australian school curriculum. The responsibility of teaching every child to swim rested with their primary school, and local community. It was, according to Dr Steve Georgakis, a sports historian at the University of Sydney, a 'definer of what meant to be Australian'.
When Georgakis was in year 7 in the early 1980s, his school principal led an excursion to Sydney's Coogee Bay. 'He hops out of his car, dives in at one end [of the bay] and says, 'Alright guys, see you at the other end',' Georgakis recalls. 'A hundred and twenty boys look at each other and then jump in – there were not real opt-outs back then.'
Everybody took part at the annual school swimming carnival too; a rowdy day of shrieking and barracking to the backdrop of swimming races at the local pool, and an 'institution' of the education system that brought the whole community together. There were competitive races for budding athletes and novelty events for weaker swimmers.
But today, those traditions have become dysfunctional or ended entirely. According to Royal Life Saving Australia, one in four schools do not hold swimming carnivals at all and, when they do, teachers say half of students no longer participate. Many schools discourage participation by running scaled-down after-school 'twilight' carnivals for competitive swimmers only.
A patchwork of state government policy helps schools run lessons but in most cases a lack of funding renders these programs inadequate to teach a child how to swim on their own. Affluent private schools can fill the funding gap but disadvantaged schools go without, reflecting a broader 'residualisation' of Australia's increasingly inequitable education system, Georgakis says.
'Like a lot of things in our education system, ultimately, it's public school kids that are missing out,' he says. 'Swimming is becoming undemocratic, we are creating a class divide.'
One-third of schools no longer provide any lessons at all, including Balmain Public School on Sydney Harbour. Trista Rose, the school's Parent and Citizens Association president, lost her cousin to drowning four decades ago. She has been lobbying the principal to reinstate lessons. 'Look at where we are, it's not really an optional thing,' she says.
But for schools grappling with rising transport costs, a crowded curriculum, staff shortages and logistical hurdles, swimming programs are no longer a priority. 'It becomes very easy to say, 'you know what, if we don't hold a carnival or provide lessons, no one is going to care',' Georgakis says.
At Thomas Mitchell Primary School on Melbourne's eastern fringe, migrant families from India and Pakistan are the norm. The school doesn't run a carnival but offers a 10-day intensive swim program to a few year groups each year, co-funded with a parent contribution of $146. About one-third of students opt-out, with more dropouts after the first few lessons.
About one-third of drowning victims were born overseas, many from countries in Asia that lack a swimming culture. The school's principal, Kathie Arnold, says most pupils are not reaching the minimum swimming benchmarks.
Set by the Royal Life Saving Australia, the benchmarks recommend that by the age of 12 not only should children be able to swim continuously for 50 metres, they should be able to tread water for two minutes. By age 17, 50% of students should be able to float or tread water for five minutes and swim continuously for 400 metres. But according to RLSA research, teachers report 'little improvement' in swimming skills in those five years.
While the World Health Organization advocates for children aged six years and older to be taught basic swimming skills, Australia is one of a handful of wealthy countries to adopt a national standard. In the UK, by the end of primary school pupils are expected to be able to swim 25m. In Sweden the curriculum dictates that students can swim 200m.
On Saturday morning a cacophony of yelps, squeals and splashes echo through the Nepean Aquatic Centre in Sydney's western suburbs. Patient parents sit on metal benches encircling a 25-metre indoor pool as children paddle through the water clinging to fluro green kickboards. The air is saturated by the smell of chlorine.
With the erosion of robust learn-to-swim programs in schools, teaching a child to swim has become a parental responsibility; many enrol their children in private lessons once or twice a week, if they can afford to.
Andrew Fleming watches his five-year-old son and seven-year-old daughter thrash about in the pool from a plastic chair by the diving boards. His daughter's school only runs a few lessons in the lead up to the swimming carnival. That makes private lessons a 'non-negotiable, it's something they have to do', he says.
At $21 per group lesson, which are 30-45 minutes depending on the child's age and ability, the cost of lessons at this pool are relatively affordable – some centres charge about $35.
Still, without the financial support of Fleming's in-laws, who pay for his children's lessons, 'we probably would have pulled them out a while ago', he says.
In outer-suburban and regional areas where ageing infrastructure causes public pools to run at a loss, access is also a barrier. This area has one of the fewest number of public aquatic centres per capita, according to an analysis by Guardian Australia. High demand means the waitlist to enrol a child in a class can be up to six months and chronic teaching staff shortages mean the centre can't run more classes to keep up.
In a smaller pool next door, toddlers as young as six months are guided through the pool by their parents and staff during early age water familiarisation classes.
Miral Mavani, an Indian migrant, watches her three-year-old son and husband with a quiet enthusiasm. She never learnt to swim when she was a child but her son's progress has her considering taking up adult classes. 'This is Australia, we are surrounded by water, it's for our safety,' she says.
Infant lessons have surged in popularity after an epidemic of child drownings in backyard pools the plagued Australia as private pool ownership began to rise in the 1970s. Pool fencing regulation did the most to reduce drownings but early-age water familiarisation was also cited as a solution.
Scarr says these programs, while beneficial, have inadvertently deprioritised lessons for older primary school students (seven to 12 years old) who are old enough to develop survival swimming skills that stay with them for life. If children don't learn in that 'critical period' they're unlikely to ever learn, a problem exacerbated by pool closures during the Covid-19 pandemic.
'Parents are spending thousands on swimming lessons before the child starts school,' Scarr says. 'Many give up at the point, having assumed that the school can provide a safety net … school programs are fantastic and should be protected but they need more funding.'
At Ashfield Aquatic Centre in Sydney's inner-west, Brian Quigley, 26, steadily freestyles his way up and down a 50m pool. The son of two Irish migrants, the first swimming classes Quigley took were a handful organised by his primary school. By then, his peers spent had spent years taking private lessons and were already competent swimmers.
'It was a box tick on the school's part, it wasn't enough to actually learn,' he says. At the annual swimming carnival he sunk into the bleachers and has spent most of his life avoiding confrontations with water.
That was until he started volunteering at the State Emergency Services (SES), which responds to serve flooding events. 'If you want to do some of the high-octane rescue stuff, you want to be a good swimmer,' he says.
With the help of friends and YouTube tutorials, he's been honing his technique. In a few months he will attempt an SES swim test that involves swimming 50m in uniform.
'I thought of swimming as something I would never do,' he says. 'But here I am.'