"Swimming seems to be at least partly a cultural thing."
I was brought up in Australia and I was taught to swim earlier than I can remember. My mother would take me to the beach grab hold of my swimming costume from behind and get me to dog-paddle around the age I learned to walk. This was not unusual when I was growing up, most of the kids at school were reasonably good swimmers by the age of eight.
Also, early on we were taught to recognize rip currents and told to keep well away from them—they looked seductively harmless but are in fact very dangerous.
When I was about seven we moved to a country town about 100 miles or so from the beach but it had a swimming pool. There too the kids were good swimmers, much better than I expected as they had grown up without access to a beach.
That background leads me to my point: whenever we hear of someone being drowned at our beaches and rivers it is so often either a vising tourist or some migrant who was born overseas and did not learn to swim at an early age. For local people of my generation who were brought up as I was this cultural difference is striking obvious.
Pools are part of the culture in all parts of Australia. Even the outback. It's just so warm all the time that pools make sense everywhere. If there's pools everywhere it means people are scared (or excited) and teach their kids to swim.
Part of the culture and part of the school curriculums in all states. Swimming classes, swimming as a sport and swim carnivals are offered at various grades throughout primary and secondary school.
Yeah but did that come before people started being able to build pools? Probably? For the beach maybe, but people wouldn't have been learning to swim inland til pools were popular I reckon.
I was brought up in Australia and I was taught to swim earlier than I can remember. My mother would take me to the beach grab hold of my swimming costume from behind and get me to dog-paddle around the age I learned to walk. This was not unusual when I was growing up, most of the kids at school were reasonably good swimmers by the age of eight.
Also, early on we were taught to recognize rip currents and told to keep well away from them—they looked seductively harmless but are in fact very dangerous.
When I was about seven we moved to a country town about 100 miles or so from the beach but it had a swimming pool. There too the kids were good swimmers, much better than I expected as they had grown up without access to a beach.
That background leads me to my point: whenever we hear of someone being drowned at our beaches and rivers it is so often either a vising tourist or some migrant who was born overseas and did not learn to swim at an early age. For local people of my generation who were brought up as I was this cultural difference is striking obvious.