Four kilometres a day and hand weights: how this former judge keeps fit at 91
She has one of the greatest minds of her generation. So what does Elizabeth Evatt, the former chief justice of the Family Court, think about keeping fit in her tenth decade?
She arrives on foot, donning the backpack she will later use to carry her groceries. She will walk from here to the supermarket, the steps counting towards the 4km she covers most days, although her phone informs her that yesterday she actually squeezed in 5km.
At 91, Elizabeth Evatt is serious about fitness and protecting her mobility. “That’s what you value most when you get old,” says the acclaimed jurist and the first Australian elected to the United Nations Humans Rights Committee, “because when you lose that you become dependent”.
In her tenth decade, the inaugural chief justice of the Family Court has crafted a regular exercise regime, rigorous and routine. “It’s what keeps me going,” she says proudly.
Aside from her daily constitutionals, which are facilitated by a new heart valve, she rides a stationary bike several times a week, having only given up road cycling in Sydney in the past few years “because I didn’t feel so secure”. After a lot of reading, she’s also crafted a set of balancing exercises, walking in a straight line and adopting a stance with her eyes closed, and she regularly lifts weights in each hand, although slightly less now that her strength has waned. “I was finding 5kg a little hard so I went down to 4kg this year.”
The combination means that, at the start of her tenth decade, she is living a pared back version of her previous life, with its decades of highly responsible positions, judging and assessing and consuming information and dispensing advice. “You can’t keep on doing those things. It’s quite draining and exhausting. I had a lot on my plate for a long time,” she says of her years of work.
The transition has had its challenges. “When you don’t have work to go to, I’m at home, there’s nobody here. That’s a bit socially isolating so you have to find other activities.”
She is still busy, but “in a different way … I don’t have any paid employment but I do other work, volunteer or personal work. I belong to a group of organisations and I attend their meetings, mostly on Zoom.” She is penning a biography of her father Clive Evatt QC, the noted lawyer and politician, and she tries to continue her love of the arts, although not always with the old ease. “I’m a little bit deaf so I don’t enjoy going to the theatre quite as much, even though I have hearing aids.”
Mostly, her later-life world is slower. “That’s the main thing about being old: whatever you’re going to do is going to take you a bit longer than it used to.”
The size of her world has also reduced. She used to travel overseas annually but stayed home last year. “So I guess I’m tailing off a bit. I might go again but I haven’t decided,” she says. “I went to Italy and France this year and I managed that but it gets a bit harder, all that business of lugging your bags around.”
She’s noticed other changes. “People get more like themselves as they get older.” In her case that’s included being able to see the humour in situations more often. She’s found herself becoming more tolerant. “You’re fully aware that life is full of errors.” And she’s embraced a new sense of liberation. “I don’t care what other people think so much. What do I care? I’ll be dead soon.”
She says this with a laugh, but mortality is something that she contemplates. “I don’t think about it all the time. It’s in the background.” Having attended many funerals, these days she heeds the parts of each service that she likes. “Anything (different) that happens you think oh that’s nice, and make a note of it,” she adds without a hint of sadness.
Being 91? “What can one say? The thing is that you know that your life is not going to go on much longer, and there’s a certain finite way about things: the Olympic Games in 2032, I don’t think I’ll be around then. When you’re younger life is stretching before you. But by the time you get to 90 you know well there’s going to be an end to it.”
And with that, some prejudices can emerge. Longevity might be afforded to precious few. But as she has also discovered, decades of experience can count for nought when you reach a certain age and carry no obvious signs of the illustrious past that you shaped.
She was at a store recently to buy a new phone, accompanied by her daughter. Although Ms Evatt senior was the customer, the shop attendant continued to address her daughter. “She kept telling him it was for me,” says the former judge, “but he kept talking to her – as if I couldn’t understand what he was saying.”
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