'It’s about quality of life': septuagenarian gym owners keep their peers moving
Their shed may not be state-of-the art, but a community-oriented approach to fitness is working out for Barbara and Peter Hill
Barbara Hill presses play on the computer and, to the perky strains of the chart-topping Dance Monkey, flits around the shed with her walking cane, demonstrating an advanced boot-scooting sequence.
Her husband, Peter, watches her fondly. Even after all these years, he finds it incredible that Barbara can pick up a step sheet and immediately figure out the moves as she reads.
Portrait of Peter Hill, 76, and Barbara Hill, 79, at their home in Fryerstown, Victoria.
Peter, 76, is a personal trainer and fitness instructor, and Barbara, 79, is a line dancing teacher. For their combined endeavours they share a large shed on their property in Fryerstown, a picturesque township in the Goldfields region of Victoria.
One half of the shed is dedicated to Peter’s gym equipment. He broke his neck in a car accident in 2013 and wound up in a coma for weeks, then in a wheelchair. He put together this gym to aid his rehabilitation. It’s a bit home-cobbled in places – cushions and bar stools in front of creaky weights machines – but he’s got a sound 50 years of experience in fitness.
The rest is kept clear for dancing. Years ago, Barbara’s parents Ernie and Elsie held ballroom classes here, coaching debutantes and holding a monthly event that drew folks up from Melbourne. The walls are lined with the names of old-time and new-vogue sequences: Cherry Tree Saunter, Tina Tango, Acapulco Cha Cha.
L-R Peter Hill trains regular Gail Rozvaczy, Barbara Hill, 80, teaches the step sequence to a class of beginners.
“My dad used to spend hours cutting the bits of cardboard,” Barbara says. When she met Peter in 1991, the pair helped out with those classes. It was Peter’s job to wield the giant arrow, to point to the next dance. Sometimes he’d also help the stragglers with the more difficult steps.
According to the department of health, only one in 10 Australians over the age of 50 exercises enough to gain any cardiovascular benefit. Looking purely at the physical perks, a more committed exercise routine improves overall movement and stability, supports the immune system, and reduces the risk of illness, including chronic diseases.
“It’s about quality of life, even just feeling more comfortable standing up and walking down the street,” Peter says. Among his clients are Matt, who’s 87 and still pumps three-kilo dumbbells, and 93-year-old Jess. Barbara’s oldest dancers are in their eighties.
“The dances are really good for keeping people’s memory active,” she says. “We had a lady who wound up getting Alzheimer’s. I would visit her in hospital and she’d forgotten everything else, but she’d look at me and say, ‘Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, dancing.’”
Barbara Hill’s Saturday afternoon line dancing class.
Barbara’s love of dancing began with ballroom when she was 14, at the Orama Ballroom in Footscray. “After I’d been going there for three weeks they stuck me on the staff,” she says. It was 1955, and the bulk of her classes were made up of Italian and Greek men, new migrants, keen to meet women.
Years later, it was Peter’s mum who got Barbara into line dancing, when she was in her mid-50s. And then she got Barbara into Peter, too. “She said she had a son who’d just been jilted, and would I go out with him,” Barbara chuckles. “It was the best thing anyone ever did for me.”
Peter took Barbara out for a date at the Fisherman’s Grotto in Carlton. “First thing she ordered was the lobster.”
Peter Hill removes rubber flooring on his shed floor to convert his gym into a line dancing studio.
When the couple moved to Fryerstown, their line dancing classes became popular thanks to the landlady of a local pub whipping up interest. “I had to learn quick smart, so I started going to every class in Melbourne and I bought the sheets off them,” says Barbara. Now she uses the online resource Copper Knob, which has step sheets and video demos.
Many of those early attendees still come to classes on Tuesdays and Saturdays and often they’ll come to Peter’s bootcamps and personal training sessions, too.
“Most of them are widows, so it’s a social outlet for them,” Barbara says.
The Saturday afternoon class starts to drift in, braving the storm outside. Barbara is a ball of energy, leading the way through songs like Cowboy Hustle, Waltz Across Texas and Hey Senorita – often cheesy dancey remixes – and yelling out instructions. There’s much hilarity for the next 90 minutes as the more uncoordinated attendees try and keep up with her.
Gail Rozvaczy, 60, during a line dancing class.
Among them is Gail Rozvaczy, a 60-year-old beautician who recently bought her first pair of cowboy boots, to really do the classes justice. They’re a far cry from her old Jane Fonda leotards.
Gail started coming here with her bitsa dogs Ellis and Murphy eight years ago. “Pete put a note in everyone’s letterbox saying he was starting a gym,” she says. “We thought, ‘Oh my god, who is this person?’”
“It’s not state of the art,” she says of the shed, “But it works really well. I would prefer this to going somewhere covered in mirrors. And it’s affordable – Pete’s about the people, not the money. He just gives and gives.”
Peter jumps in: “The people who come here help me with my broken neck more than I help them. I have to do the exercise with them 90% of the time, which improves my flexibility and strength.”
Before the pandemic, Peter had been driving to Melbourne twice a week, to run aqua aerobics and gym classes at four retirement villages (“of course I get all the short people to go down the deep end”), which he’s now narrowed down to one, in order to focus on the local community with Barbara.
Peter Hill trains a newcomer.
Some of the clients wouldn’t say “shit for a shilling” when they first turned up, Peter says, but now they answer back with gusto.
“Most of the time we’re all talking and he tells us off,” says Gail. “We tell him we’re exercising our tongues.”
Banter is undoubtedly part of the Peter package. His T-shirt today reads “If I offend you, my work here is done” – one of a collection of similar sentiments – and then there’s his catchphrase, used in response to everything from tardiness to someone cheeking him back: “Oh yeah,” he’ll drawl. “Rightio.”
When Barbara tells Guardian Australia that she’ll be 80 in two weeks, Peter chips in with: “Oh, you poor old bastard.” But then there’s that look again, the one he gives her that’s loaded with admiration.
