‘Where’s my daughter?’ Mum’s terrifying moment as toddler falls into fast-flowing creek
Tuesday, 14 October 2025
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It was meant to be an ordinary afternoon when Katherine Goodrick took her two young children to the stream near their home.
The creek looked harmless - not too deep, familiar, a place the family had visited plenty of times.
Her husband was untangling fishing lines, while her son, 4 years old at the time, and her daughter, 22 months, explored the water’s edge.
Then came the splash.
“I looked around and said, ‘Where's my daughter?’ And my friend said ‘She's in the water.’ The bank had given way where she was and she'd fallen in,” Goodrick told Stuff.
“I didn't even think twice about… getting into a freezing cold stream. It had to be done, otherwise she was going off. The water was probably up to my thighs and it's quite a fast-flowing creek. But, she didn't make a sound or anything.
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“As I got in, she came past me, flipped over onto her back and was just floating. She was fine. She wasn't panicked, which was quite surprising.”
Goodrick said the incident, in February last year, was over in seconds but could easily have ended in tragedy. She is sharing her story to remind other parents how vital swimming lessons are, and that even a few basic skills can be the difference between panic and survival.
She said her daughter had been taking swimming lessons since she was 6 months old. By the time of the near-miss, she’d been learning for about a year.
“So she knew that when you're in the water, and you need to, you just go on your back. I don't know if it was a conscious thing, but she just did what she had to do… we were very lucky.”
As a mother of three, Goodrick has seen first-hand what can happen when children aren’t taught how to swim from a young age. Her eldest son, born during the first Covid-19 lockdown, missed that early window because pools were closed.
“I do think [it] had a negative impact and the fact that he couldn't go to lessons, because my daughter is way more confident,” she said.
With more than a decade of teaching behind her, she is also well aware of how much schoolchildren’s swimming ability has slipped over the years.
“What has really shocked me over the last 15 years is how few kids can swim 50m freestyle. To me, everybody in the school should be able to do that at 13.”
Goodrick said it’s a stark contrast to her own childhood, when swimming was simply part of school life and seen as important as learning any other skill.
“People just don't seem to value it as a sport or a skill, and when I look at other things that kids are doing, it should just be up there… Being able to play soccer or netball isn't going to save your kid's life. But being able to swim 50m might.”
For Goodrick, swimming lessons shouldn’t be optional: “It's really sad how many drownings we have in our country. It's really frustrating because it is so fixable. It is a cost, but I think about all the other things we consider a cost that we do to save our kids' lives.
“Car seats are a cost but we don't blink an eye because we know it's for their safety. And when we're surrounded by rivers and lakes and beaches, it's the same thing.”
She said people often assume baby swimming lessons are just “doing the same songs and same activities”, but the repetition helps those safety skills stick.
She credits the swim school at the Rotorua Aquatic Centre for teaching her children the skills that she believes saved her daughter’s life.
“If I hadn’t gone and grabbed her when I did, I don't know where she would have ended up. Well, she would have ended up in Lake Rotorua - but I don't know if she would have been alive.
“But… the takeaway is, thank God I put her in lessons and she knew what to do because it could have been so much worse.”