In 2025, millions converged on India for the Maha (Great) Kumbh Mela, a Hindu festival so rare it occurs just once every 144 years. It was described as the globe’s biggest religious festival and “humanity’s largest gathering.” For weeks, the world watched as a sea of pilgrims flooded the banks of sacred rivers in a breathtaking display of devotion.
But thousands of kilometres away, in the rolling green hills of northern New South Wales, there’s a place where spiritual celebration isn’t a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle, it’s simply daily life.
On “New Govardhana”, a tranquil, sprawling 1,000-acre Hare Krishna farm in Eungella, there’s a festival every single day.
“It’s a big festival today, yesterday was a smaller festival, and the day before that was also a festival,” said the property’s business manager John Ogilvie. He’s speaking from the grass outside a temple glowing with colourful stained-glass windows.
Inside, marble deities adorned in vibrant traditional attire appear almost mid-celebration themselves.
“There would be at least 300 days (a year) that give us reason to have a festival. There’s barely a day when there’s no reason to celebrate one of our saints.”
Established in 1977 and situated about 10 kilometres outside the town of Murwillumbah, with the Tweed Valley’s lush green hills rolling into the distance and “far from the glamour of Surfer’s Paradise” or hotspots like Byron Bay, New Govardhana is Australia’s largest Krishna farm. Nearly five decades on, it’s considered a crown jewel among the faith’s global properties: a spiritual sanctuary carved into subtropical farmland.
Up to 200 people live on the property at any one time, while others reside in Murwillumbah and visit frequently. Yet the farm’s reach stretches far beyond the Tweed. Visitors arrive from across Australia and around the world – some for a single day, others for extended stays – whether they become devotees or are what some in the Krishna community refer to as “closet Hares.”
New Govardhana has duplicated a model based on the Byron Yoga Centre, which Ogilvie – initiated as a Krishna devotee in the 80s and now also known as Jitamitra Das – started and still runs.
The farm hums with activity: yoga retreats, teacher training programs, and courses in Vedic literature, Ayurvedic cooking and kirtan. Between 40 and 50 live-in volunteers help keep the wheels turning – milking cows at dawn, tending gardens under the Queensland sun, or chopping vegetables in the bustling kitchen that feeds hundreds.
Guests stay in simple cabins scattered across the property, waking to birdsong and temple bells. Those getting “a bit more serious or curious” about the philosophy move up the hill to the “Krishna pad,” where daily spiritual practice becomes more immersive.
“It’s very multinational,” said Ogilvie.
“Just about every continent is represented here – North and South America, Europe, Russia (and) China, Japan…” He adds that they’re not “trying to capture people and convert them”. But he said many were attracted to the lifestyle. About one per cent end up staying permanently.
Food is central to the experience. Guests enjoy daily meals based on a satvik diet, vegetarian, wholesome and nourishing, with cheese and seed milk for protein. Every Sunday, the community gathers for a feast. The feast is free, though donations are encouraged and includes fragrant curries, rice and sweets are scooped generously from huge buckets.
Today marks the festival of Nityananda Trayodashi, commemorating the appearance of Sri Nityananda Prabhu, a saint in Hindu’s Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition of Bengal, in the 1400s. The day began just before dawn with the “darshan arati”, the auspicious first viewing of the deities, followed by an offering of flowers to Nityananda, kirtan that echoed across the valley, children’s activities, and then a communal lunch.
Krishna Kirtana Dasa, 64, has been known by that name since he was initiated as a Hare at 18. In another life he was a businessman; today he is a retired practising monk who has taken over the farm’s cow protection program as a “hobby.”
Dasa explained that it’s run like an “army reserve” project, with the girs and Illawarra bulls trained to pull logs, ploughs and carts “in case we get cut off from Saudi Arabia which is where our fuel comes from”.
“Govardhana” means a place where cows are protected in the Vaishnava tradition. Dasa said New Govardhana is unique because, unlike in the commercial dairy and beef industries, where cows are lucky to live to only age four, one of New Govardhana’s animals made it to age 27. The farm runs tours of the program every Saturday and produces its own milk sweets and dairy products under the brand name “Ahimsa” (“no violence”), based on an ancient Indian farming method.
Up until the past decade, Dasa said only proper Hares could visit the farm. There were “no gray shades, only black or white”, he said. Today, anybody is welcome, “even if you just want somewhere to stay for the night for a wedding in town”. (The only rules are no drugs or alcohol, no fish, eggs or meat and no dogs.)
Having reached capacity with housing, New Govardhana has recently purchased another 165 acres of land next door, a sign that the daily festival shows no sign of slowing.
“There is a common bond, people are experiencing better versions of themselves,” said Ogilvie. “We believe that the purpose of human life is to grow, improve and ultimately become the best version you can.”
And on this stretch of green valley farmland, where temple bells ring at sunrise and cows wander peacefully past vegetable gardens, that better version is celebrated, almost every single day.
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