Highlights
- The Brishti Ganesh Temple is the first Nepali style temple in Victoria.
- The temple is a part of multifaith installations in the peace park surrounding a Buddhist Stupa built to last 1,000 years.
- The temple is dedicated to Brishti Shrestha and other known and unknown children who passed away from rare brain cancer.
Myers Flat, located just outside the regional town of Bendigo, is less than a two-hour drive from Melbourne CBD.
It is here that one can find one of the largest Buddhist stupas in the world, tucked in a sprawling “peace park” that promotes multiple faiths with its various installations.
Ian Green OAM is the chairman of The Great Stupa of Universal Compassion.
Recognised by the Australian government for furthering Buddhism and interfaith relations in the country, Mr Green says the stupa is all about bringing various faiths together.
“To me, interfaith relations are of paramount importance in this country,” he told SBS Nepali.
Ian Green OAM of The Great Stupa of Universal Compassion in front of the Ek Onkar installation. Source: The Great Stupa of Bendigo Facebook
He thanks the Dalai Lama for instilling that philosophy in him.
Multiple faiths under the same sky
The Great Stupa of Universal Compassion in Myers Flat in regional Victoria. Source: Abhas Parajuli
Mr Green says the idea of a peace park featuring multifaith installations came after guidance from the Dalai Lama.
From St Francis’ statue as a symbol of Catholicism to Ek Onkar, an icon of Sikhism, and a Baha’i Garden, many faiths find a place in this park.
The Brishti Ganesh Temple is the latest link in this multifaith chain that brings people from various communities together under one roof—or sky, as it is a park – to create a harmonious community.
Victoria’s first Nepali Hindu temple is not just dedicated to the elephant-headed Hindu deity, Ganesh.
Leaders of multiple faiths were present at the Brishti Ganesha Hindu Temple in Bendigo. Source: Ian Green Facebook
Built with typical Nepali architecture, the pagoda temple commemorates all known and unknown children who lost their lives to brain cancer.
Why is it called Brishti Ganesh temple?
It was early 2018 when seven-year-old Brishti Shrestha had just gone back to school in Bendigo after a term break.
Umesh Lal Shrestha(c) with his wife Jesmin Shrestha(r) and their daughter Subrina(l) pose for a photo in front of the Brishti Ganesh Temple. Source: Umesh Lal Shrestha
While playing, she fell down on the school grounds.
Little did her parents know that their life was about to turn upside down in a few weeks.
“The school called saying Brishti was unwell,” Brishti’s father, Umesh Lal Shrestha, recalls.
For the next couple of days, as their daughter rested at home, Jesmin Shrestha and her husband noticed some physical changes in her.
At the start, Brishti’s speech became slurred.
Then, she started drooling and tiptoeing as she walked.
“We felt this wasn’t not right,” Mr Shrestha recalls.
When a GP saw Brishti, her parents were told to take her to the emergency department of their local hospital at once.
Brishti Ganesha Temple was inaugurated by Cr Jennifer Alden the mayor of the City of Greater Bendigo on April 10, Saturday. Source: Mayor of City of Greater Bendigo/ Facebook
After a few scans, the couple was referred immediately to the Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH), Melbourne.
“It was tough, very tough,” says Mr Shrestha, as he recalls the sombre days that followed.
The doctors delivered yet another blow to the Shrestha family: Brishti’s days were numbered.
RCH doctors had diagnosed Brishti’s illness as diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), a rare form of , which according to the Children’s Cancer Institute, is the deadliest of all brain tumours.
“They told us there is no treatment. We were dumbfounded,” says Mr Shrestha.
For the next few months, the hospital became their home, where Brishti eventually passed away.
The parents say it was unbearable for them, and they left Bendigo for good.
It was even more so when their friends and families turned away every time the Shrestha couple talked about their deceased daughter.
“We were grieving, and all our friends probably thought by talking about Brishti, it would compound our sorrow,” Mr Shrestha says.
They didn’t want to let go of Brishti.
“As a family, we felt that if we caved in, Brishti would be forgotten. We didn’t want that to happen after what she had been through,” says Mr Shrestha.
The Royal Childrens Hospital in Melbourne, Tuesday, 28 July, 2020. Source: AAP
They wanted to donate a bed to the hospital, only to learn no names could be on it and that the bed would become scrap metal pretty soon.
The thought about donations came next.
But the couple couldn’t find the peace and solace they were after.
One day, they drove back to Bendigo and met Mr Green to talk about what could be done for them and Brishti.
After all, Brishti had been memorialised in the sprawling gardens of 25 Sandhurst Town Road, where the peace park is located.
During their conversation, they saw the idea of a temple as a great way to honour all children lost to brain tumour.
Mr Green was acquainted with Hinduism through his spiritual guru, Lama Zopa Rinpoche. And a devout Buddhist himself, he suggested the temple be dedicated to Ganesh.
When the Shrestha couple heard this suggestion, they knew this was it.
Ian Green OAM of the Great Stupa of Universal Compassion with his guru Lama Zopa Rinpoche. Source: Ian Green Facebook
“It was our eureka moment, you know,” says Mr Shrestha.
Challenges in Brishti’s way
Once they had the idea seeded, the grieving parents knew they had a mammoth task ahead.
The first challenge was arranging the funds.
Luckily, there were many heroes who donated not only cash but also their knowledge and skill in helping Brishti Ganesh Temple stand up.
They also had a fund to which Mr Shrestha’s colleagues, Rotarians and other friends and families would donate so that Brishti could fulfil her dream of visiting Disneyland in the United States.
Ian Green OAM of Great Stupa of Universal Compassion with Umesh Lal Shrestha. Source: Ian Green Facebook
However, she was too ill and was unable to fly.
Some drew the temple’s architectural plan; others volunteered to tile it while some mates lent a hand for the temple's construction.
About three tonnes of goods were shipped as charity from their home city of Patan, Nepal, where all these cultural artefacts are handcrafted.
More than three tonnes of items were donated by people of Lalitpur in Kathmandu, Nepal. Source: Ian Green Facebook
Then the pandemic hit. But help was available.
Once the lockdown in Victoria began to ease late last year, work on the temple began.
“Fourteen volunteers spent 40 days [on weekends] from 8 am till 4 pm,” says Mr Shrestha.
He can’t thank every person enough who helped in his quest to keep Brishti’s name alive.
Mr Green says the number of visitors at the Peace Park is at an all-time high despite the pandemic.
Fourteen volunteers spent 40 weekends building the temple. Source: The Great Stupa of Bendigo Facebook and Umesh Lal Shrestha
He thinks this number will hit 50,000 a year once the restrictions settle down.
“Many are just curious, and when they come here, they are equally surprised,” he tells SBS Nepali.
The consecration of ‘Ganesh Than’, the small temple dedicated to Ganesh, took place in front of a few hundred people of multiple faiths on April 10 Saturday, with Greater Bendigo’s Mayor Jennifer Alden officially unveiling it.
“It felt auspicious; it drizzled a bit in the morning, which I took as a good omen from up above,” Mr Shrestha tells SBS Nepali.
The Shrestha family have announced the second phase of the project to construct traditional Nepali spouts around the temple with donations from the community.
