My Story — Your Brisbane Pool Safety Certificate Specialist

I was born in 1979 in South Africa — and honestly, it was much the same story right across the world back then. Pools everywhere, barely a fence in sight, and "she'll be right" (or whatever the local version of it was) pretty much summed up the parenting mood. Sadly, far too many young kids drowned in backyard pools back then, all over the world. The pool safety laws we have in Queensland today exist in part because of those losses. Real families. Real kids. Real heartbreak that someone, eventually, decided we shouldn't keep accepting.

When I was two years old, I came within a whisker of being one of those kids.

I was at home with a young babysitter. She ducked into the pool area to talk to a neighbour, who happened to be a close friend, over the boundary fence, the way you do. I was out in the backyard playing. When she headed back inside the house, the pool gate sadly did not fully latch behind her as it was faulty — it never quite caught. A little while later, I toddled off, saw the unlatched pool gate, pushed the gate open, made a beeline for the water like little kids always do, and went straight in head first.

Minutes later, the babysitter found me floating face down.

I'm told she screamed the street awake. A neighbour came running — and by some genuinely lucky miracle, that neighbour happened to be a doctor. He fished me out, started CPR right there on the concrete, and kept me going until the ambulance arrived. My parents were both at work. By the time they got the call, the worst of it was already over. I was blue, then I was breathing, then I was in hospital — and somehow, I was still here.

"

It took a matter of minutes.

I don't remember a single second of it. I was too small. But the story has lived in our family for forty-odd years, and somewhere along the way it quietly became part of me.

So no — I never grew up dreaming of being a pool safety inspector. There was no big lightbulb moment. After more than twenty years in the corporate world, I just hit a point where I wanted my work to actually mean something. Not just pay the bills, but have some quiet purpose. Pool safety was the obvious answer staring me in the face the whole time. It's one of the few jobs where doing it properly — really properly — might mean another family doesn't get the phone call mine almost did.

That's why I take my time. That's why I'll politely point out the gate that almost latches, even if it's annoying to hear. That's why I'd rather you pass on the second visit than scrape through on the first.

Because it really does only take the blink of an eye.