Weekend is a new concept for an average Indian in a small town. My father or his father would have never had any idea of what is a weekend and how to make a holiday. During my long years of medical training, no differentiation of any lind was htere in between sundays and mondays. We worked all days and we never had any problems about it.
In this new land, weekend is a thing of importance. Finding new things to do every weekend is essential. A question on monday "How was your weekend?" has to be answered decently. So something had to be done.
This weekend, Saturday we had been to Kiama through Helensburg. Kiama is a 100 odd km far coastal village known for its blowholes. Blowholes are holes in the seaside rocks. When a high wave hits on this rock, a sort of negative pressure is created which pushes water with high force which looks like a wonderful natural fountain.
We set out in the morining first heading for the temple at Helensburg.Sri Venkateshwara temple at Helensburg is a beautiful hindu temple with shrines for Chandramouleeswara, tripurasundari, sivasubramania swamy, lord venkateshwara, andal, mahalakshmi and ofcourse navagrhas.
The drive to helensburg seemed a little too long but the day was good, traffic less and we reached the temple by around 11 ish. The temple is beautifully built looking new but I learnt it 's beeen there for a coupla decades now. The ambience of the temple made me nostalgic. We had a wonderful darshan of all the deities and headed towards another important part of the program - having breakfast at the temple canteen. The canteen as i see is manned by volunteers and serves authentic south Indian food. I am proud to proclaim myself as dosa addict. So we ordered masala dosa, pongal and chetan was fond of vadas. Though I had been having sumptuous south indian food at Chethan's house, the temple food was one even Chethan was looking upto. the dosa kept upto the expectation and the pongal exceeded it.
We left the temple by noon and headed towards Kiama. On the way we stopped at thte Bald point for breathtaking views of the sea and mountains. then we stopped at the Nan Tien budddhist temple. It is a beautiful chinese buddhist temple with a pagoda, main shrine, canteen, museum, library and a training center. The teachings of buddha appear everywhere in the temple. We spent some time there and left for the blowholes.
The trip was worth for the views of the ocean we get at the Kiama seashore. the blowholes were throwing a spectacular water show. We stayed there for while and drove back to Sydney.
A weekend worth telling everyone on Monday.
Hey, wait. I roamed around on sunday too. Visited the Bondi beach. forgot the battery for the camera. went intot he waves. Strong surf. it was good. in the evening visited the famous Sydney murugan temple. A temple run according to tamil customs by the srilankan tamil community. A very divine place.
I had been to the temple with Kumar anna and his family, good people from the part of India where I belong to. They took me to a Srilankan restaurant for sdinner. had kothu parotta, vattalapam and cocnut juice.
A good Sunday.
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