Mark Holden is missing his weekly session with his personal trainer to take this walk with me. He smiles as we embark on the near hour-long circuit the 72-year-old does three times a week. Holden says “a nice little walk” is essential to “fighting the forces of gravity that try to bring you down” in your eighth decade.
It’s a brisk Melbourne morning, overcast and still as we set off from the suburban streets towards the Elwood foreshore. Holden has been a local since 1998 when he returned from decades as a music industry journeyman in the US after finding success in Australia as a baby-faced, white dinner-suited crooner known for distributing red carnations to fans on Countdown in the mid 1970s.
