Sink or Swim – Details, episodes & analysis

In our final episode, we look to the future and explore how we can survive the hotter summers that lie ahead for all of us. Blacktown is facing increasingly extreme urban heat, but locals are coming up with their own solutions. We visit two cool refuges where we discover ordinary citizens and local leaders who are shaping the communities they want in the places where they live.  

You’ll hear from Maryam Zahid, a community leader creating spaces for newly arrived women to learn skills like swimming, and Emma Bacon, who is campaigning for community-led heat responses. 

And you’ll find out – will Angelica and her swimming classmates reach their goals this summer? Will they sink or swim? 

Angelica has decided: this is the summer she finally takes the plunge. Go with her as she joins an adult swim class for beginners, and realises that there are plenty of other adults who share both her trepidation and her determination.  

Angelica’s home of Western Sydney is heating up faster than nearly anywhere else, making swimming an essential survival skill – not just for staying afloat, but for staying cool. She talks to local doctor Kim Loo to learn what extreme heat can do to the human body, and to urban planning and heat researcher Professor Sebastian Pfautsch, who explains how the new homes and suburbs we build – without the community’s input and without an eye to our hotter future – are exacerbating the discomfort and the risk.  

Sink or Swim is an Impact Studios Production.
Written and produced by Angelica Ojinnaka-Psillakis and Britta Jorgensen.
Audio editing by Britta Jorgensen and Celine Teo-Blockey.
Additional support from Jane Curtis and Tamson Pietsch.
The executive producers are Olivia Rosenman and Sarah Gilbert.
Sound design by Melissa May.
The theme song is by Friday.
Podcast artwork and graphic design by Alexandra Morris.
Research by Jackie May.

Sink or Swim is part of a place-based audio project called Welcome to Blacktown, supported by the Paul Ramsay Foundation. If you want to know more visit our website www.impactstudios.edu.au/sinkorswim

It’s the start of another scorching hot summer and Angelica is looking for relief. She longs to dive into some cooling water, but there’s one problem... Angelica can't swim. Join our host as she examines what it means to be a non-swimmer in a nation that prides itself on its prowess in the pool, and what stood in her way as a young girl growing up in Sydney’s west.  

You’ll join Angelica as she mingles with the crowd at a pool party in Mt Druitt, hear from writer Sarah Malik about her own hard-won adventures in the water, and get Olympian Shane Gould’s take on Australia’s swimming scorecard.  

And you’ll be by Angelica’s side as she takes us back to one fateful school swimming carnival, many years ago.

Sink or Swim is an Impact Studios Production.
Written and produced by Angelica Ojinnaka-Psillakis and Britta Jorgensen.
Audio editing by Britta Jorgensen and Celine Teo-Blockey.
Additional support from Jane Curtis and Tamson Pietsch.
The executive producers are Olivia Rosenman and Sarah Gilbert.
Sound design by Melissa May.
The theme song is by Friday.
Podcast artwork and graphic design by Alexandra Morris.
Research by Jackie May.

Sink or Swim is part of a place-based audio project called Welcome to Blacktown, supported by the Paul Ramsay Foundation. If you want to know more visit our website www.impactstudios.edu.au/sinkorswim

I'm Angelica Ojinnaka-Psillakis. I'm a public health and social researcher, a young carer, a youth leader, a second-generation migrant and a proud Igbo woman.   

I’m 26 years old and until last summer, I couldn’t swim.  

This three-part podcast follows my journey learning how to swim over one scorching summer in Western Sydney. I’ve lived in Blacktown City for almost all my life. It's starting to feel like each summer is hotter than the last.

Dive in with me and you'll hear from my community, and others like it, where not being able to swim is actually pretty common. Australia likes to believe we’re a nation of swimmers. We live mostly near the coast, and our sandy beaches and sparkling waves are world famous. But the reality is, many of us don’t have easy access to a beach or a swimming pool. And even if we do, we don’t always feel safe or welcome in these places.  

Dive in with me. Sink or Swim launches September 19.

Sink or Swim is produced by Impact Studios at the University of Technology Sydney, in partnership with The Paul Ramsay Foundation.