THE FESTIVAL OF COLOURS: SUNDAY FEBRUARY 23, TORQUAY

The Festival of Colours (Holi), is a great day out where we throw coloured powder over friends and family! Due to popular demand - on Sunday, February the 23rd, 2020 - for the first time we’ll celebrate throwing colours in Torquay.

Torquay is a seaside holiday town 95 kilometres south-west of Melbourne. It nestles into the east end of the Great Ocean Road, south of Geelong. Torquay is loved for its surf beaches, especially Bells and Jan Juc.

We’ll set up our festival tents and sound stage on the Torquay Front Beach Foreshore (The Esplanade, Torquay). The Festival of Colours 2020 will run from 11 am - 4 pm. We invite day-visitors, holidaymakers and locals alike to enjoy the colour and excitement of this unique festival. Please bring your smile, an open heart and a white t-shirt for the best results.

Every hour in front of the main stage we’ll come together to throw coloured powder into the air with our families and friends. Colour will spring from our hearts and rain from the sky as we dance and sing together! You can meet people and enjoy stage entertainment. Your family can have their faces painted or receive Bhagavad-gita card readings, or you can just soak up the festive atmosphere. For the younger ones, there will be jumping castles and kids activities. We will have heaps of delicious vegetarian/vegan meals, snacks, chai and drinks available on site. Come with a smile and an empty stomach!

Festival of Colours is proudly supported by the Surf Coast Shire and the Victorian Multicultural Commission. The Festival provides an opportunity for the broader community to discover something about the way of life of the members of the Hare Krishna community by joining us in celebrating a time-honoured festival.

Our Festival celebrates the oneness of the human spirit and is based upon an ancient festival originating in India. Krishna, the God of play, would engage in throwing coloured powders with His cowherd friends. Our throwing coloured powders embodies the blooming of colour which manifests when we exchange heartfelt friendship, and which comes with the arrival of autumn.

Entry is free! Coloured powder is $5 per pack. Vegetarian/vegan food ranges from $5 to $12 per person. Our Festival is alcohol, drug, smoking, anger and meat-free!  Check out our Festival of Colours Torquay 2020 Facebook page or www.festivalofcolours.com.au for all the action.

You may wish to buy your colours online through Eventbrite, where you can buy 3 packets of colours per person for $10. Your colours will be given to you at the Festival registration table when you present your Eventbrite ticket. No refunds are possible once colour packets are sold.

Children must be accompanied by parents or guardians. In the case of Extreme/Code Red weather conditions, the Festival will be cancelled.

Hare Krishna Valley is a retreat centre and organic farm - based on the principles of eastern spirituality - near Bambra, 30 minutes west of Torquay. We practice bhakti-yoga, protect and care for our cows, and host regular retreats on vegetarian/vegan cooking, meditation and yoga so that we can share the benefits of natural living and high thinking with others.

On the second Sunday of the month, we host an open day for anyone inquisitive to learn more. You can read more at www.harekrishnavalley.com.au.

FESTIVAL OF THE CHARIOTS, SUNDAY FEBRUARY 9

Do you know that 2020 marks the 40th anniversary of the St Kilda Festival and our 10th annual Jagannatha Festival of the Chariots?

Mark Sunday, February the 9th in your diary. Lord Jagannatha invites thousands of St Kilda Festival goers to party! I’m sure you’ll agree, Lord Jagannatha is indeed the most merciful form of the Lord – He is eager to extend His blessings to everyone simply by glancing at them with His beautiful lotus eyes.

At 1 pm we’ll pull the Lord’s beautiful chariot from the corner of Beaconsfield Parade and Fitzroy Streets. We’ll escort the Lords via Jacka Boulevard to Luna Park, and return to Catani Gardens by 2:30 pm. We can’t do this without help from you and your family and friends.

After the Parade, we’ll carry Srila Prabhupada and Sri Jagannatha-Balarama-Subhadra to Their special Temple tent. From there, They’ll bless everyone throughout the afternoon.

This year Catani Gardens will again host our Vegetarian / Vegan Hare Krishna Food Festival, offering delicious food and drinks to all-comers.

We’re also excited to confirm with you that Sri Keshava and Joakin (the Global Party People) will join us again on stage. Sri Keshava has earned global renown as a contemporary Vedic disc jockey, dancer, and yoga teacher. Using Vedic and ethnically diverse music mixes, live instrumentation and singing, they welcome festival-goers from all walks of life to come together to hear and dance for Jagannatha’s pleasure.

Many of our traditional attractions will return, including community song, dance and drama on-stage. Off-stage there will be henna and face painting, Bhagavad-gita card readings, and free watermelon for all.

If you would like to help, please contact Bhakta Däsa (bhakta@iskcon.net.au) and he’ll guide you towards volunteering opportunities leading to this mega-event, or on the day itself.

PROJECT OVERVIEW FOR THE FOOD FOR LIFE KITCHEN

ON-CAMPUS
• STAGE 1: Establishment of the new main kitchen, new Deity kitchen, community plate washing room, gazebo and book storeroom
• STAGE 2: Re-development of the theatre and associated rooms/spaces as the new Prasadam Hall (estimated cost $300,000)
• STAGE 3: Re-development of the paraphernalia room to convert to shop at ground level and deity services at level 1; and re-development of the current prasadam hall and temple shop as the new theatre (estimated cost $1M)

OFF-CAMPUS 
• establishing a new Crossways ($200,000) and retiring debt on the Project

STAGE 1 Remaining Works
• Building Works  $306,000
• Equipment Fit-out $65,000
• Carpark – Estimate  $60,000
• Rear Gate - Estimate  $15,000
• Security Cameras  $5,000
Sub-Total  $451,000
Add contingencies 10%  $45,100
SUB-Total  $496,100
Less Cash-at-bank Oct 11, 2019  $47,000
Total Funds Required  $449,100

DECEMBER PROGRESS REPORT

In November we hosted a special fundraising Dinner in the St Kilda Town Hall. The chief guest at the dinner was His Grace Suresvara Dasa, who told us, “I don’t know of any other temple outside of India that’s feeding people sumptuous Krishna prasadam three times a day, come one come all. Melbourne is a great example of what happens when devotees enthusiastically follow Srila Prabhupada’s compassionate instructions to flood the land with Krishna prasadam, to give the public a higher taste with blessed food.

We were fortunate to receive generous pledges totalling $225,000 at the Dinner, then pledges totalling $30,000 immediately afterwards.  Please pray that we can receive enough funds (another $195,000) to complete Stage 1. We are planning to begin work on remodelling the old kitchen in February-March, allowing four months for completion.

Stage 1 of our development has been successfully up and running since Janmastami 2018. With the help of a State Government grant and the support of our generous devotee community, we were able to invest 2.5 million dollars to establish a first-class commercial kitchen facility to serve future generations. We also constructed a book store (adjacent to the Paraphernalia room), and a gazebo to serve as a yajna-sthala.

Late in October, the three-phase power was connected. It has taken us nearly three years to do this. Although we installed a solar power generating system that supplies enough power to run the temple and offsets some of our electricity expenses going forward, that system is not enough to run the kitchen. The three-phase power connection allows us to do that.

The three-phase connection has allowed us to test and run in our commercial-size chapati-maker. It can produce 900 chapatis per hour. There is a separate dough mixer, cutter and roller. The roller is part of the main cooker and it loads the flattened dough into the cooker. The plan is to provide chapatis for lunch at the Temple, and at Crossways as an add-on to the regular meal.

Three-phase power also allowed us to connect our dishwasher, which will reduce our environmental footprint. We’re now saving an hour a day in washing dishes. That’s saving the pot shed devotees an hour a day in time spent washing pots. So they can now go and do an hour in cleaning other parts of the kitchen. So we’re saving time, saving effort, and we can potentially save wages.

In November, the back wall of the carpark was re-instated following the new power connection. This month, half of the repaving of the carpark was begun to comply with Council requirements.

What’s still to do in Stage 1? Remodelling the old kitchen means completing the Deity kitchen so that Radha-Vallabha’s offerings can be made in a dedicated devotional space. The guest kitchen, and a plate store (for steel plates) and large-scale plate washing facility also need to be completed. Plate washing can save us up to $40,000 a year. It’s going to make us money. Currently, we send 1,000 compostable suger-cane pulp plates to the tip daily. We spend $40,000 a year on the degradable sugar-cane plates, and $18,000 a year on garbage collection to dispose of them. By investing in steel plates and a plate washing machine, we can save up to $50,000 per year. By installing stainless steel plates, on smaller festivals we’ll all be able to use stainless steel plates, and guests will be able to use stainless steel plates. We also need to install an automatic back gate and security cameras.

If you want to contribute, please contact Guruvandana on +61 415 478 361. We hope to regularly update you on our progress, so please keep an eye on this blog for updates.