“On the count of three, we’ll all jump into the water,” my new backpacker friend said to me as we stood on an old boat in Vietnam. I was in my early 20s and travelling solo in Asia and had joined other young backpackers from Britain.

One of the men saw my face drop and body freeze. “I can’t swim,” I whispered. “As if you can’t swim!” he laughed. Everyone turned around. What do you mean she can’t swim? She’s Aussie right? “You guys are born with fins,” a young, sunburnt woman said.

More than a decade later, I still can’t swim. Research released last week found that one in four adults were either weak swimmers or can’t swim at all. At first, I was comforted by the fact that I’m not alone. But admitting that I am one of the one-in-four, even for someone who is about as private as a public pool change room, is pretty embarrassing.

I live on a continent surrounded by water, in a city that is home to one of the world’s most iconic beaches, and hail from a country that dominates the Olympic pool. Swimming and surfing is synonymous with Australian culture.

But not for everyone. I grew up an hour from the ocean with English as my second language, and parents who couldn’t afford swimming lessons. It’s no wonder I didn’t live up to the Bondi surfer stereotype my backpacker friends had of Australians in either appearance or ability.

The Royal Life Saving Australia survey found that for adults born overseas, the percentage of non-swimmers was even higher than one in four: 35 per cent either can’t swim or swim poorly.

Among non-swimmers, more than 10 per cent said their parents couldn’t swim either. I was born in western Sydney, my parents came as refugees from rural villages in Lebanon and their idea of water safety was to stay the hell away from it.

Fear was another reason the survey found adults held back from learning to navigate the water. But for me, that’s an understatement – I’m bloody petrified. As a primary school kid attending a public school, I spent two weeks annually at the local pool as part of a learn-to-swim program (there was a low nominal fee that could be waived if you couldn’t afford it). One year, I nearly drowned, pretending to be able to tread water in the deep end in a bid to hang out with my school crush.

Since that incident, submerging my face in water, even in a bath or shower sends me into a frenzied panic. Over the years this anxiety has mounted and now my young daughters notice that I’m always sitting by the pool or on the sand at the beach while they swim with my husband. As they get older, it’s become clearer to them that I avoid entering the water.

“Mummy, why don’t you ever swim? Don’t you know how to?” my nine-year-old recently asked.

“That’s OK, Mummy, you can join my swim class,” my six-year-old suggested.

In a bid to ensure my children don’t wind up like me, I’ve been paying for weekly private lessons since they were two. I can afford to.

But many others can’t. What used to be across the board swimming lessons at public schools, has now been scaled back to an opt-in program with the expectation that most parents will take their kids to private lessons. Friends who teach at schools in western Sydney say that some years there’s not enough people signing up to even bother with it.

Sure, it’s not a perfect system. I managed to fall through the cracks, nearly drown and then feign sickness during my mandatory swimming lessons when I was a kid, but some of my siblings learnt to swim there. If we didn’t have that program, given our socio-economic and cultural background, there was no other way to be encouraged to embrace, rather than be scared of the water.

In the past financial year, 294 people drowned in Australian waterways. There was a 27 per cent increase on the 10-year average for school-aged children.

The NSW government provides a $100 active kids voucher for school-aged children that can be spent on swimming lessons. In last year’s state budget $100 learn-to-swim specific vouchers for every child aged three to six were announced, after rising rates of drownings in preschoolers.

More needs to be done to ensure vulnerable kids – especially in at-risk communities – can swim. A comprehensive swimming program via our state schools and less reliance on the private sector is one part of the solution.

But I’m not going to just sit here (poolside, with my feet in the water) and preach about the importance of accessible swimming lessons.

I’ve made a promise to my children that I will pack away the floating bed and face my fears. Forget being fabulous at 40, my aim is to overcome the waves of anxiety when I am in the water, and learn to freestyle by 40.

Antoinette Lattouf is a multi-award winning journalist at Network 10, an author and the co-founder of Media Diversity Australia.