Being scared of the water, embarrassed about their lack of water knowledge and not wanting to wear flesh-bearing swimming costumes in public are all things which hold adults with an Aboriginal or multi-cultural background back from entering public pools.

However, a program being run through Orange City Council’s migrant support services is encouraging women - no matter their cultural background - to learn the life skill of swimming.

The free classes have been running since the beginning of the month, with women being taught the fundamentals of how to be safe in the water, and swimming, each Tuesday as part of a five-week course. 

“A lot of the people in the program now had never been in the water before,” council migrant support officer Anni Gallagher said.

Mrs Gallagher said the inaugural program is for women only given conversations she’d had with mothers whilst running some of the service’s community programs. 

“Women would tell me how their kids were going in school and how they were going to swimming lessons. I would say ‘That’s great, you’ll all be able to go to the pool together within the community’. But the women would tell me they couldn’t because they didn’t know how to swim themselves,” she said. 

“For school children there’s plenty of opportunity during school and the holidays to learn to swim, but I hadn’t heard of anything for women specifically.”

Out of the 30 ladies who enrolled most have committed to the program and have benefited in many ways from the classes. 

“The anecdotal evidence is that women are now saying ‘Yes, I’m going to come with my children and I’m going to bring them into the pool.’ And we’re really thrilled with that they’ve at least got the confidence to go into the water and enjoy it with their children,” Mrs Gallagher said. 

ashlea.pritchard@fairfaxmedia.com.au