Sardool Singh arrived in Australia in June 1954 from Amritsar, India to
work at the Department of Zoology at the University of Sydney.
"... we didn't know about the climate of Australia so I had plenty of warm clothes because I thought it was going to be a cold country ... my very important things with me, of course, were my musical instruments so I had a violin which was given to me by my father before he passed away ... I also brought [a] sarod with me ..."
"The hardest thing to adjust to was the food ... sometimes I just had to fill up by drinking milk! ... slowly I got onto fish and chips ... they were the cheapest and best food I discovered..."
"... people looked at me as if I was a dumb person. I think it was mainly because they'd never seen a Sikh with a turban and beard before ... so they used to think that I couldn't speak English and it was a bit of a disappointment and a shock to me ..."
"... in this country that I really became Indian. My Indian identity has come up here ... Australia helped me ... I was so confused at one stage, about Sikhism, and I used to go to the public library to read about Sikhism ... We never learnt the depths of the Sikh religion which I learnt here ... my Sikh in me has also come up in this country."
