They have spent so much money building this
Madhudvisa das : Srila Prabhupada leaving the temple in 197 Danks Street, which is one block off from the ocean. Beaconsfield Parade is the name of the road that goes along the ocean there, and Srila Prabhupada in the morning would walk out there and go along. Because Prabhupada is getting into the car, it would indicate that he would be going down to the Botanical Gardens because if he was going onto the beachfront he would just walk. This is Prabhupada arriving in the Botanical Gardens there in Melbourne, which was a very beautiful place.
He'd know that the British had the tradition of building these elaborate botanical gardens wherever they would have their colonies, whether it was in Africa or in India, so Australia was like that too. They would have these elaborate botanical gardens that they would construct, and they would bring all these different exotic trees into one place. Srila Prabhupada would go early in the morning and he would comment, "They have spent so much money building this and now look, in the morning no one has come to take advantage of it. We are the only ones."
Prabhupada would be walking in the Botanical Gardens at seven in the morning, and everybody else would be whizzing by in their cars going to work and we would be taking advantage of their Botanical Gardens. Srila Prabhupada would preach the philosophy of Krishna consciousness using nature. He would tell us many times that "You can learn from nature." When he would be going on these morning walks, he would point out things and he would amaze us. Sometimes he would say, "This is a certain type of a tree," and he would quote the name of the tree in Latin like he was some kind of a botanist. And lo and behold, we'd go and look at the tree and the name would be there and it would be that tree. And he would point out the medicinal value in the trees. Prabhupada was very educated, not just in spiritual things but he had so much material knowledge that he would amaze the devotees.
Reference: Following Srila Prabhupada-A Chronological Series by Madhudvisa Dasa
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