After Mungo National Park the next closest stop on my itinerary is clear on the other side of Victoria, a really really long drive. So I decided I needed to add a stop in between to break up that drive… and now I’m in Bendigo. I picked this place because I wanted to see the Great Stupa of Universal Compassion.

Even though it’s a big modern construction, this place was pretty amazing. The main structure is modeled after the 15th century Gyantse Stupa in Tibet and built with the exact same dimensions. That makes it the largest Buddhist stupa in the western world. There were beautiful gardens in front of it with monuments representing pretty much all of the world’s major religions, but the really cool part was inside.

Inside the stupa was a really cool museum to Tibetan life and culture. The star of the show, however, was the main Buddha image, carved from a single massive piece of jade found in Canada. It’s the largest jade Buddha in the world and in its finished form, seen below, it weighs four tons! It was quite a sight! You would expect to find something like this in Asia, but not here.

Bendigo also had some other sites that I felt warranted a day of exploration, so I spent the next day walking all over this extremely pleasant city. Pretty much the epicenter of town is the beautiful granite Alexandra Fountain. And what respectable Victoria city would be complete without it’s own monument to Queen Victoria herself?

Bendigo also sports one of Victoria’s best art galleries. There were lots of great works in there. My favorite section, though, was the aboriginal art exhibit. I don’t know why, but I’m just fascinated by it.

The piece below was even painted with traditional materials. That means natural and locally found pigments mixed with kangaroo blood as a binding agent.

I didn’t know before coming here, but Australia has always had a very sizable Chinese community, mostly thanks to their 19th century gold rush. Naturally, they have a very interesting museum dedicated to the Australian Chinese in the area, the Golden Dragon Museum. The most interesting part were the imperial dragons used for processions. Below left is Sun Loong, he was the longest imperial dragon in the world at 100 meters long until 2019. He was replaced by Dai Gum Loong, below right, in 2019 at 125 meters long, the dragon that’s used currently.

It’s impossible to appreciate these dragons in their entirety in pictures because the bodies extend and wrap around the entire circular room that their kept in. In the pic above you can see part of Sun Loong’s body on the upper level though. But the most interesting dragon in the place was the original, Loong. I was confused about when he was actually made. It was sometime in the late 1800’s, but another sign said he was unveiled in 1901. In any case, he’s the oldest imperial dragon in the world. You would think all of these would be somewhere in China, not Australia, but here they are. I enjoyed this museum a lot more than I was expecting.

Bendigo had a lot of really cool Victorian architecture to admire as well, including their town hall.

Finally, I ended up in Rosalind Park to check out some wildlife. Every where I’ve been so far there are really colorful parrots and cockatoos all over the place. But they have been proving to be infuriatingly difficult to get pictures of. I managed to get a couple here in Rosalind Park, though they don’t do justice to the variety I’ve seen in my travels so far.

Bendigo also has its own local colony of flying foxes too. The whole eastern side of the park was saturated with them.

Thats it for Bendigo. This is the second of three very short posts as I make my way back east. Tomorrow, I have over six hours of driving to do. The next short post should be up in a couple of days, so be patient…