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She’s a familiar face in our living rooms every week night, but until now newsreader Rachel Smalley has chosen to keep her personal life separate from her public profile.
However, the spate of tragic drownings around the country over summer, which Rachel has been tasked with telling us about on Nightline, has moved her to speak out for the first time about a subject close to her heart – water safety.
Her mother, Shirley Mackie, nearly drowned when she was younger and Rachel is so determined to make sure her own son Finn (1) will be safe in the water that she started taking him to a pool at the age of three months.
She remembers the panic she felt as she let her baby boy disappear under water for the first time. “It goes against all your mothering instincts,” explains Rachel.
But building his confidence in the water is something she feels she has to do.
Her own childhood in Christchurch involved many happy times by the sea, and it wasn’t until she became an adult that she discovered the paralysing fear that has always gripped her mother following a near-death experience.
“She’s never been able to go in the water since,” Rachel explains. “As a child I used to play in the surf while oum watched from the shore, but if I’d ever got into trouble she wouldn’t have been able to save me. That must always have been in the back of her mind.”
Reading out stories on Nightline about terrible cases like the death of Auckland toddler Nylah Faamanu Vau, who drowned this month at Waiwera Thermal Pools, is a shocking reminder of the dangers of an activity so many families enjoy. “The terrifying part is how quickly an accident can happen.”
For Rachel and her husband, freelance TV producer Luke Johnson, teaching Finn to swim has been a wonderful bonding time as well as helping him develop crucial survival techniques.
“Most babies love being in the water – I think it reminds them of being in the womb. For toddlers, however, it’s not instinctive to float,” says Rachel. “At the moment, when Finn goes into the water, he’s learning to turn around and reach up so it becomes natural to try and hang on.
“Every parent knows there are those momentary lapses in concentration when something can happen. In teaching these skills you’re buying yourself some time – if there was an accident – to respond.”
While long, hot days at the beach are a part of childhood for many Kiwis, they are still a relatively new experience for London-born Finn. Rachel had been working as TV3’s European correspondent when she fell pregnant, but opted to leave her job once he was born.
“I thought it would be extremely difficult to balance that kind of work with having a baby. You can’t just be darting off to Europe because a Kiwi has been in a drama there!”
Rachel admits that even as a full-time mum, raising a child so far from home was a tough call. “It was hard being away, but I suppose I just went blindly into it. I had a stack of how-to guides, but mostly I just figured it out on my own. It meant that Finn, Luke and I became a tight little trio.”
In her heart, however, Rachel knew that ultimately she wanted to bring her little boy home. “He was never going to be raised in the UK because when you’ve had a New Zealand childhood you just know what you’re missing.”
It seemed like fate then, when she got the call from TV3 asking her to take up the position as host of Nightline.
It was a big move for South African Luke, who had never been to New Zealand until he came here to live. “He grew up surfing and dodging sharks in Cape Town,” explains Rachel. “He loves it here.”
The busy journalist is conscious now that she must find time to improve her own swimming skills. “As Finn gets more adventurous I want to make sure I’m stronger too. I don’t want to be my mum – feeling fearful as I watch him.”
Right now Finn couldn’t be happier as he’s bobbing about in the pool. “He’s so relaxed, he even tries to chat while he’s under water,” laughs Rachel.
