For the last 22 years she has been a familiar face to thousands of children at Albany Leisure and Aquatic Centre who have learnt to swim under her watchful eye.

But on Friday, 52 years after she taught her first students at Middleton Beach, she will hang up her water wings for the last time.

“It’s finally time to retire,” Kinnear said.

“It’s been a very interesting few years and I’m really going to miss ALAC and my staff,” she said.

Kinnear arrived in Albany from the Czech Republic at the age of 12, after her father secured a job with Main Roads.

“We didn’t have a home to go to, so we lived in a tent on Middleton Beach - I thought it was just too good to be true.

“I swam every day and by the time I was 16 I’d got all my awards.”

It was that dedication to the sport which secured her first job as a vacational swimming teacher and instigated her involvement with the embryonic Albany Surf Life Saving Club.

“The mid-1950s was the first time women started competing and getting medals, up until then it was mainly geared for men.”

“I stayed there until 1963, when I got married and had family.

“After that I carried on teaching and got into water-skiing which I continued for the next 40 years.”

Kinnear had an eventful career as a water-skier, winning three national gold medals, and judged many State and national championships.

Over the years she has witnessed many unusual requests from parents.

“I remember at Emu Point after Jaws came out, a parent came down and said ‘My child is not going swimming in the ocean, I’ve just seen Jaws and I won’t go swimming in it and nor will my kid’.

“Not so long ago I had a letter from a parent saying ‘My child can’t go to swimming lessons because they can’t swim’.”

When Kinnear retires on Friday an era will pass with her, as she was the only original ALAC staff member left from when the centre first opened its doors in 1986.

“Everyone else has either moved on or died,” she said.