Pilgrim’s Diary, January 22, 2002, Sydney

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Pilgrim’s Diary, January 22, 2002, Sydney
by Vipramukhya Swami

I would like to give a special thanks to Aniruddha Prabhu, the temple president of ISKCON Melbourne. I must say that Aniruddha was a very gracious host while I was in Melbourne. Besides making nice arrangements for my care, laundry, prasadam, etc., he also drove me around pretty much wherever we needed to go and made nice arrangements for preaching programs, etc. Yesterday he had Devamrta Maharaja and me over for lunch at his house, which is just down the road from the temple.

My disciple Devahotra and I are now on a flight from Melbourne to Sydney. We’ll stay some days there before continuing on to Adelaide and then back to Melbourne.

One of my desires in visiting Australia, besides meeting the wonderful devotees, seeing the deities, and getting a lot of preaching opportunities, was to see some kangaroos in the wild. Yesterday my desire was fulfilled.

A devotee in Melbourne, Bhakta Tim, had accidentally left his beads back at the New Nandagram farm, about an hour and a half drive west from Melbourne, so I jumped in the car with him, and away we went.

It was a rainy day yesterday. In fact, during the entire trip to Melbourne, the weather was a bit strange. There was only one hot day (it’s summer in Australia during this time of year). The rest of the time it was quite cool, unseasonably cool. Sometimes in the early morning it felt cold. And yesterday it was just plain raining.

But the rain wasn’t going to stop me. Fortunately, though it did rain at the farm, it wasn’t continuous and most of the time, it was just a light drizzle.

New Nandagram is a 200-acre farm managed by one devotee, Gangesvara Prabhu, who lives there with his daughters. There are presently no other full-time resident devotees on the farm. They have a small set of brass Gaura-Nitai deities in a small temple room.

When we first arrived there were no kangaroos in sight. His Holiness Bhaktisiddhanta Maharaja, an American ISKCON sannyasi, was there, parked in a huge, orange bus painted with the word "Gauranga" on the outside. He welcomed us and brought me inside to see his hundreds of Salagram Silas and Govardhan Silas, which he is worshipping very nicely. I also showed him some pictures on my laptop of my trip last March to the Kali-Gandaki River in the Himalayas.

Later, Gangesvara Prabhu took compassion on me. The rain had almost stopped, so he and I went out walking through some woods, or what they call "the bush" in Australia, until we came to some grassy slopes in search of kangaroos.

Actually, when we speak of kangaroos, there are many different species. The general group of animals is called marsupial, which describes a kind of critter, both large and small, that hops around on two hind legs and has a pouch in the front for the young to mature in. The females give birth prematurely, and the young make their way on their own into the pouch, where they live for up to 235 days, suckling on nipples inside the pouch.

The gray kangaroos are the really big ones, and the most plentiful in Australia. They have a lot of them at the farm, I’m told, as well as some wallabies, a small kind of kangaroo.

As Gangesvara and I came to the top of a big, grassy clearing, he pointed out a number of large, gray kangaroos eyeing us over the top of the long grasses. After a minute or so we saw about four of them bound off across the field and head into the trees. One of them was quite large, much bigger than a man.

Satisfied that I had finally seen a real kangaroo in the wild, we headed back to the temple building for some prasadam, which Bhakta Tim and another devotee had cooked up while Gangesvara and I were out looking for kangaroos.

We passed the brahmacari ashram building, which was made with bricks that were made by devotees. The building has solar panels and a 12-volt lighting system inside.

Prasadam was delicious. There were some guests visiting the farm, and after prasadam I pulled out my laptop and showed them some pictures from India and England, as well as other places I had been to in the last year.

Around 5 PM (the days are long in Australia this time of year), Bhakta Tim and I headed out back to Melbourne, but we were both pleased to see lots of kangaroos and even some wallabies before we left the property. One group of gray kangaroos was quite close to the car, and we stopped and watched them as they stopped and watched us. Finally they all hopped off in unison and disappeared over the top of a hill.

This morning it was still kind of wet outside. I finished the puja for my Salagram and Govardhan Silas and packed Them away in preparation for the flight to Sydney. No sooner had I put my deities away than Bhaktisiddhanta Maharaja showed up from the farm wanting to have darshan. He was really disappointed that my Salagram and Govardhan Silas were all put away. However, I’m coming back to Melbourne on the 29th of January, and he said he’d be in Melbourne then, so he’ll get a chance to see them when I return.

2:30 PM, Sydney, Australia.

It’s much warmer here and feels much more like summer should feel in Australia. Everyone tells me the weather we experienced in Melbourne is pretty normal for there. Now it’s become overcast, and I just heard a clap of thunder.

This is a beautiful temple in the largest city in Australia. The temple room is very large, with a marble floor. The deities, Sri Sri Radha-Gopinatha (see photo), are small, marble, and very attractive. I will tell you more about Sydney in a future posting, as soon as I settle in.

Ooops. Just heard more thunder— louder this time. Guess there’s going to be a rainstorm. Yup. There’s a downpour outside right now. It’s nice. Cooled the temperature down. It was getting hot.