‘No limit on the time to chat’: Why walking and talking is great for body and mind
Curating and embarking on week-long walks with friends in some of the world’s most exotic locations is one of top Australian businessman Peter Yates’ biggest pleasures.
Whare Kea lodge is a timeless retreat on the South Island of New Zealand, providing luxury accommodation on the shores of Lake Wanaka, set against the dramatic backdrop of the nation’s Southern Alps.
For decades it has been owned by one of the heirs to the Myer family retailing and investment dynasty, Martyn Myer and his wife Louise.
As the crow flies, Whare Kea is not far from New Zealand’s most famous walk, the Milford Track, that has been thrilling hikers for more than 150 years.
Fifteen years ago, Myer suggested to his good friend and skiing buddy Peter Yates, famed for his work with Macquarie Bank and then the Packer, Myer and Fox families, that he hike the Milford.
Yates and his wife Susan duly did the walk with their architect friend, David Seeley and his wife Sharon.
The foursome loved it so much that they returned two years later to walk the nearby Routeburn Track, famed as the ultimate Kiwi alpine adventure connecting Mount Aspiring to Fiordland National Park.
The experiences tapped into Yates’ time working in Japan in the early 1980s – he speaks fluent Japanese – when he and Susan hiked around Kamakura and Mount Fuji, enjoying Japan’s hiking culture and beautiful landscapes.
It inspired the former investment banker, now chairman of AIA Australia – the local arm of the Hong Kong-based global insurance giant AIA Group – to start a high-powered walking group that travels the world to do seven-day hikes in exotic locations, following itineraries that are personally curated by Yates.
In addition to Yates and his wife, its members include the Myers, the Seeleys, Reserve Bank board director Carol Schwartz and her husband Alan, and GRACosway founding partner Mark Rudder and his wife Pam.
More recently the group has been joined by Yates’ brother Mark, a famed Melbourne geriatrician, and his wife Annie.
“We’ve done several walks in New Zealand, a few in Japan, and then some of us have done walks in the United Kingdom, in England and Scotland,” says Yates, who is also a director of the Myer and Baillieu family-backed wealth advisory firm, Mutual Trust, and holds a variety of not-for-profit board roles, including at the Australian Science Media Centre and the Shared Value Project.
The first walk where the group came together was in November 2014 in Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s four main islands, which Yates organised with the local adventure firm Walk Japan.
“The beautiful thing about walking is there’s no limit on the time to chat.”
The trek included Mount Kaimon and the UN heritage listed island of Yakushima.
“I admire people who like camping, but I absolutely hate it. It is not for me,” Yates quips.
“So the great thing now is that you can book these walking tours and you only carry a 7kg day pack and the tour organiser moves your main pack. So in the morning you just get up, pack your lunch, and off you go to walk through some of the most beautiful scenery in the world.”
He says walking is different to his other favoured pastime of skiing because in the latter, you must be “in the zone”.
“When you are going down a steep slope, you can’t stop focusing. But when you are walking, you have got plenty of chances to chat,” he says, noting the group always talks about a wide range of issues over the days they are together.
“Walking provides both an opportunity to discuss lots of things, whether it be business, how you are going with your family, issues with one’s parents in terms of ill-health, or successes or less successes with our children. We also hold roles in philanthropy, plus there are social and political issues that we are active in. So the beautiful thing about walking is there’s no limit on the time to chat.”
The next trip for the high-powered group will be a trek of the Salt Road, one of Japan’s old overland trading routes in Nagano and Niigata Prefectures, in 2026.
Yates was a regular runner in his youth, doing five to 10 kilometres most mornings. Since then he has kept up his walking, running and skiing, giving him a strong cardio base.
But what he realised during the Covid pandemic was that he was lacking core strength, so he hired a personal trainer. He now works out at the Melbourne Sports and Aquatics Centre, not far from his South Melbourne home.
“I’ve been seeking to seriously improve my core strength and my balance. I’d like to be able to surf and I’m not a surfer but I’ve started,” he says
“So I gave my trainer a mission to get to a point in one year where I could stand on a bosu ball with one arm and one leg fully extended, with a weight in one arm, and do that 10 times, on each arm and each leg. Recently, just before my 65th birthday, we actually got there. It took a year to get to that point.”
At home Yates loves cooking. He calls himself a “four vegetables guy”.
“If you come to my home for dinner, you will get four serves of vegetables for one serve of protein. That has been a feature of our family,” he says.
“When we used to take the kids to Japan, Japanese food is relatively vegetable free so when we would go out to dinner, afterwards I would get down to the local 7 Eleven convenience store and buy some carrots and cucumbers and cut them up. I was called the veggie cutter, because I would feed everybody a round of vegetables.”
Every February, Yates also raises money for the national charity known as Febfast, where you abstain from alcohol for the month.
“It is good for your sleep, good for your skin, good for your body, and it reminds you that you are in control of your health,” he says.
While he has never done meditation or yoga, he is a proud practising Anglican and attends church most Sundays.
A short walk from his home is the historic St Silas Anglican Church in Albert Park.
“I consider that if going to the gym is my physical training, going to church is my mental training,” he says.
“It is a very important part of my week just to be able to stop and think through song, prayer and community. I really enjoy it.”
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