Life ends at 80? Not for spritely Toby

TASMANIANS’ life expectancy is among the shortest in the country, but that’s not stopping South Hobart’s Toby Gordon from enjoying a full and active life.

“I’m going to be around for a long time yet,” the 80-yearold said.

New figures from the Australian Health and Welfare Institute show Tasmania, and other regional areas, have a shorter life expectancy than metropolitan areas in major cities.

The estimated number of years a Tasmanian is expected to live at birth in 2013-15 is 80.8 years.

This compares with 81.2 years for all regional areas, and 82.4 years nationally.

Mr Gordon said he planned to significantly outlive the life expectancy.

“I’ve still got a fairly big bucket list of places to visit and I’ve got young family [and] I want to see them grow up, so I’m sticking around,” he said.

Mr Gordon said turning 80 earlier this year had not slowed him down.

“If you asked my wife Pam, she will tell you that I’m no different at 80 than I was at 50,” he said.

“I feel as good now as I have been at any age ... I still do as much and walk as much and travel as much.”

Mr Gordon said there were three things that kept him young at heart — being healthy, positive and having a sense of humour.

The Australian Health and Welfare Institute said life expectancy information could be used as a broad measure of population health.

Australia has the eighth highest life expectancy at birth in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Develop- ment countries, OECD figures show.

The figures showed northern Sydney had the longest life expectancy at birth in Australia — 85.5 years — and the Northern Territory had the shortest — 77 years.

Women continue to have a longer life expectancy than men, and both women and men had an increase in life expectancy between 2011-2013 and 2013-2015.

Nationally, the life expectancy for women increased from 84.3 years to 84.5 years and from 80.1 years to 80.4 years for men.

The figures also showed there were 130 potentially avoidable deaths per 100,000 people before the age of 75 in Tasmania during 2013-2015, compared with 108 per 100,000 nationally, 62 per 100,000 in North Sydney, and 226 per 100,000 in the Northern Territory.