For many Australians, the summer holiday is a frantic scramble of activity. But for one columnist, it became an enforced lesson in the art of doing absolutely nothing.
The Challenge of Complete Inactivity
On December 26, 2025, Tim the Yowie Man found himself alone at a beachside cabin on the New South Wales South Coast. His mission, dictated by his wife, was clear: a full day of reboot. No company, no mobile phone, no books, and most painfully for a summer traditionalist, no cricket commentary on the radio. The voice of Jimmy Maxwell would have to wait.
"Mrs Yowie told me I needed a reboot. 'You're always rushing about; you need to slow down a bit,' she advised," Tim recounts. The family even bet he wouldn't last thirty minutes without reaching for his device.
A Front-Row Seat to Nature's Theatre
With movement restricted to brewing coffee and shifting a deck chair, an unexpected world unfolded. The cabin, perched directly on the Murramarang South Coast Walking Track, became a perfect vantage point.
Instead of seeking out adventure, a parade of wildlife came to him. A goanna emerged from beneath the deck to bask on the stairs. A swamp wallaby grazed peacefully. An echidna, an animal he'd never noticed at the location before, ambled past not once, but multiple times.
"I've seen more wildlife 'doing nothing' than I ever have on a bushwalk," Tim observed, a fact hilariously underscored when a tired bushwalking family returned past his deck, the father excitedly pointing out the very goanna that had been Tim's companion for hours.
The day was marked by subtle, often missed details: the dew on spotted gum leaves shimmering like fairy lights, the precise moment the sea breeze arrived as a rustling wave through the canopy, and the evening emergence of kangaroos communicating with flicks of their tails.
Echidna Antics Capture Reader Imagination
The column also shared a deluge of reader responses to a previous feature on echidnas. Stephen Leahy of Wallaroo Road recalled a persistent echidna that nightly triggered his dogs by wandering near their fence.
"Night after night after night" he would have to rescue the spiky creature with a bucket and gloves, until a cleverly placed piece of wood diverted its path.
Other readers, like Tyson Powell, reported seeing the monotremes swimming, using their long snouts as snorkels in waterways including the Murrumbidgee River.
As darkness fell on his day of detox, a possum with a joey on its back scurried past, a fitting end to a lesson in observation. "A bit like me," Tim reflected. "And slowing down to reflect on the past year is a good place to start."
