It was a Monday in March last year when Belinda and Shaun Hedley faced what no parents want to imagine, let alone see their twin two-year-old sons lifeless and blue floating in a swimming pool.
"It felt like I just stood there and froze," said Belinda Hedley this week.
"It was just my two boys are dead! This can't be happening.
"I know I wasn't just standing there. I screamed and yelled to ring an ambulance and I was doing things, and I could see Shaun in the water, but another part of me was going, 'I can't handle this'."
The Hedleys extended their profound sympathy to the families of Central Coast toddler twins Ethan and Matthew Hill, and Charlestown toddler Harry Connors, who drowned last week within days of each other in separate backyard pool incidents.
They agreed to speak frankly about what went wrong the day they so nearly lost their boys, Seth and Braith, in the hope of preventing more deaths.
A gate latch that failed and a two-minute break in watching the children was all it took to breach the "layers of protection" Belinda Hedley now urges pool owners and parents to apply.
"We tried the gate later and it shut every time, but it didn't shut one time and the twins were able to walk straight in. And knowing them they would have jumped straight into the water."
Because her twins drowned that day, and are only alive because their parents knew how to do CPR, Belinda Hedley is blunt if people underplay the risk of any pool safety issue.
"I know how the parents [of Ethan, Matthew and Harry] must be feeling now. I know what it's like to see your child dead. We are so lucky, and I don't mind saying what I think if it helps protect other children.
"I had a woman say to me, 'Oh we've got a latch like that, that doesn't shut every time', and I said to her 'Well, aren't you lucky that a child hasn't worked that out?"'
The blunt speech is needed when you look at the facts.
In Australia last year, 27 children under five drowned, 16 of them in backyard pools. In the past decade the Hunter and Central Coast regions have experienced a disproportionately high number of toddler drownings.
A Hunter Health survey in 2004 found 4900 children under five, or one in eight toddlers, had had near-drowning experiences, mostly in pools.
Repeated surveys conducted by local councils, government departments and consumer organisations over the past five years have found high levels up to 70 per cent in some areas of pool fences are faulty or do not comply with regulations.
In 2004 the Australian Consumers Association found half the pool fences on the market failed to meet a key safety aspect of the Australian standard, and a NSW Injury Risk Management Research Centre study in that same year found pool fences and gates were a factor in 88 per cent of toddler drownings.
The figures prompted retired NSW Coroner Derek Hand to comment this week: "You can make laws and pass regulations [that] will help prevent children from drowning, but one of the things you can't do is make laws to put common sense into people.
"Everybody knows it's a problem. The laws are there. It's not a case of people intentionally breaking the law, but neglect. It's a harsh word, and it's a very touchy subject, but I suppose when it comes down to it, it is."
At CPR courses she has organised, Belinda Hedley has urged 500 mothers to check that pool gates are maintained and click shut, and to adopt the habit of facing the gate when they leave the pool area and giving it a shake to confirm it's shut.
"That's the kind of thing we have to do," she said.
"The amount of people at the courses who've never checked their gates is very high."
The Hedleys received a Royal Life Saving Society certificate of commendation last year for what happened after they found their happy, vibrant twins drowned and still.
At the side of the pool, on a day in which the family had already had to cope with the sudden death of an uncle, they began CPR on their boys.
"I was with Seth, but I didn't know it at the time. It didn't even enter my mind to think which one of the twins it was," Belinda said.
They compressed the little chests and breathed into the boys' mouths for four minutes that seemed to go on forever.
"Shaun was saying 'Keep going, it's working' because their eyes rolled back and we could see it was having an effect."
Both boys vomited "a large amount of water". Then Seth started to cry and they heard the sirens of arriving ambulances.
"Once Seth started to cry I picked him up and ran to the ambulance," Belinda said.
By the pool Shaun Hedley kept working on Braith for another 30 seconds, and ran to the ambulance when the toddler also let out a sound.
"It was horrible and it's still horrible to remember," said Belinda, who suffered post traumatic stress after that day and even now can only be away from her children for short periods.
"Protecting children around pools is not just one thing," she said.
"It's not just keeping your eyes on your kids. It's not just having a good pool fence and gate and having good safety practices around pools and knowing CPR.
"It's all those things, and you only need one to fail to have a tragedy."
In the Hedley case it was a pool gate at a relative's home that didn't snap shut every single time.
Belinda's two nieces, aged 18 months and three years, also walked into the pool area on that day but they didn't enter the water.
"They were standing on the side when my sister [Kylie Pearce] went out to watch the kids. They must have seen it all, which is an awful thought."
Belinda was breastfeeding her youngest child when the boys went in the pool.
"We'd been taking it in turns to watch the children in the backyard. My sister stopped what she was saying to go outside.
"She could have sat there for another couple of minutes. I thought later, would I have got up? If she had waited another 30 seconds or a minute, or answered a question, they would have been dead."
Family members estimated the children were unsupervised for two minutes but it was enough time for them to enter the pool area, drop into the water, breathe water into their lungs and begin to drown.
"Children, particularly younger ones, will continue to breathe even under the water, but they stop breathing in less than a minute," said Royal Life Saving NSW chief executive David Macallister.
It's why they drown so quickly.
Kidsafe Hunter regional executive Leonie Forsyth cried when she heard that the Hill twins had died, and again at the death of Harry Connors.
"They're just babies," she said.
"The awful thing about backyard pool drownings is that they're preventable. They're always preventable."
"I know what it's like to see your child dead. We are so lucky, and I don't mind saying what I think if it helps protect other children."
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