Bases Covered

What a great couple of days it has been. Ronald has been an outstanding host and has laid a table that would win him big points on the popular television show, "Come Dine With Me." He has also performed above and beyond the call of duty as my driver for a variety of local attractions. On Monday morning we did a few errands (including picking up a bottle of absinthe and a box of sugar cubes) and then made our way to the West Head section of the local national park. This lovely area is not far from Ronald's house, but it is like a drive back into the bush with great vistas and a lot of wildlife. We saw a pretty cute little wallaby along side the road and birds aplenty before stopping at the lookout that is opposite the Barrenjoey Lighthouse which I chose for the first of today's pictures. After we returned home, I took a hand at cooking and prepared some edible beef curry. Yesterday our journey took a more ambitious turn with an extended spiritual sojourn to Wollongong and the giant Buddhist Temple. Before we even left the house we listened to the Hari Krishna chanting on Ron's battery operated Hindu alarm clock so we could be sure to hit more than one religion in a day. The drive down to the "Gong" was very lengthy and required us to go entirely across the Sydney CBD, but once we were on the other side Ronald chose to steer the car into the Royal National Park. It was a real pleasure to see the place again, and to travel the road that goes across the top of the reserve before it heads south to Wollongong. The place really is beautiful, with thousands of acres of green bushland and broken terrain. Once we came out on the other side, we followed a coastal road where the highway is actually on stilts set out from the sheer rock cliff that faces the sea. When we arrived at the temple I was unprepared for how large the complex was and how beautiful. It looked like a miniature Forbidden City, complete with a large courtyard and adjacent pagoda. The actual worship areas were unavailable for photography, of course, but I did managed to sneak a shot of an incredible carving from wood that defies one's definition of the possible in art. Hundreds of little, detailed characters interwoven into a crowed tableau that one could have stared at for hours and not seen it all, and carved from a single block of wood about four feet long. We made our way to the dining hall where a twelve dollar vegetarian lunch was offered, and I had a hard time reconciling my reaction to the bounty heaped upon my plate with the concept of "vegetarian cuisine." There was a califlower carrot sauce mix with slices of fried tofu that tasted exactly like chicken breast; a mixture of celery and brown sauce that included chunks that tasted very much like beef, some fried bok choy, and the standard bowl of rice. It was almost more than we could eat! After we left the temple we retraced our steps back to the northern beaches of Sydney, but we did not return to the house until Ronald made one more spiritual detour. The Ba'hai Temple that rests upon a mountain a few miles from Narrabeen was our target, and we went from two men with no clue about the faith to informed pilgrims in the space of eighteen minutes, thanks to an orientation film the staff showed us. The temple itself was not anything near as elaborate as the Gong complex, but it is still an interesting building of nine entrances under a lofty dome. We paid our respects and returned home where we enjoyed a delicious meal from a flattened "chook" (chicken) that we had purchased at the Devitt Meat Market. After a couple of glasses of absinthe, I fell into a peaceful slumber and woke this morning satisfied that we had covered three significant religious movements in one day.