Punjabis Down Under
By Baljit Singh

THE mushroom growth in hoardings and banners in the region testify to the emergence of Australia along side Canada as the Punjabi’s new immigrant destinations, replacing the original EI Dorado’s of Baleyt and Um’ rica, since sullied by tough immigration and asylum laws. It wasn’t always like this. Until the final quarter of the 18th century the almost unexplored continent was viewed as a tough inhospitable land even by its colonial claimants, Britain. But the war of American Independence in 1769 closed the United States as an option for housing industrial Britain’s ever-increasing prison population, and it was forced to cast its net wider — as far afield as Australia, which it was decided was not so uninhabitable after all, not for convicts at any rate. The first prison colonies were established in the province of New South Wales, in the south-east of the continent towards the end of the 18th century. The prisoners were followed in time by settlers, predominantly farmers and later miners from the mother country. This pattern was retained throughout the 19th century and formalised in the White Australia policy of 1901, the precursor to the apartheid policy of another English colony, South Africa, and the Commonwealth Immigration (restriction) Act.

But even before Australia closed the tap on Asian immigration, many intrepid adventures from Punjab had begun to establish a toehold in the Australian outback. Some of them had gone as small-time traders, engaged in selling wares in the vast open countryside. Most others went as labour for the local sugarcane industry centered in New South Wales and Queensland. Still others were camel drivers, Muslims from western Punjab brought in to ferry supplies from the coastal town of Adelaide across arid central Australia to the settlements around Alice springs. The puritan camel drivers, known locally as Ghani’s on the mistaken belief that they were from Afghanistan, and their famed ‘ghent’ express are now part of local lore and in a case of carting coal to Newcastle, Australian exports camels to Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. Away from the limelight other Punjabis were carving out their own legend in the far north of the country. Hard-working Sikhs concentrated around Cordonvale nears Cairns they began to buy sugarcane farms they were hitherto employed on, and extend them.

Their story is typified by one Mangal Singh, who came to Australia as a sugarcane worker in 1893. In 1928 he was joined by his son Dalip Singh. The father and son so impressed their ageing white employer that he offered them a half share in his farm as reward for their labour. Ultimately Dalip Singh bought out the entire farm. In 1951 Dalip Singh was joined by his son Gian Singh. Today the family owns five sugarcane farms, including two by Gian Singh’s son-in-laws. Exemplary farmers, the family recently broke virgin ground, using precision lasers to assist in levelling the land to a point where a kilometre-long sugarcane rows can be supplied by a single channel.

Other families had concentrated around Woolgoolga, near Coffs Harbour in New South Wales, where, taking a cue from the banana plantations they had been employed on in neighbouring Queensland, they began their own fledgling banana plantations. It did not take them long to realise though that the mountainous territory they had chosen as their home could not compete with the sun-baked plains of Queensland. The rocky soil resisted mechanisation and the southern slopes were prone to winter frost. But unlike Queensland the slopes deflected the tropical storms that buffeted the coast every few years, wrecking the banana crop. In such year the Woolgoolga farmer could make a killing in the domestic market.

A limited advantage but Punjabi farmers were quick to seize on it. Within years Woolgoolga became New South Wales own banana country, symbolised in the Big Banana park at ‘Coff Sahiba’ (Coffs Harbour), a rival for tropical Queensland.

Success became a magnet for more families to move to the region. Some 1400 Sikhs now inhabit the region, the largest ethnic denomination in the town of 2700, and control over 60 per cent of the banana farms in the area, and provide about 25 per cent of NSW’s banana crop. They also branched out into other crops and one of them now markets Khalsa oranges out of Queensland, an unusual tribute from down under.

But success also brought the bane of Punjabi life, politics. The first Sikh gurdwara was established in 1969. But by intent or, more likely, oversight, one of the area’s big shot’s name was mis-spelt. His name was Lally Singh. A peeved Lally had his revenge by opening a second gurdwara to outdo the first.

Still, if the residents were unable to completely shed their Punjabi streak of bull-headedness, they remained true to their rural ethos in more positive ways, too. Creatures of a more innocent age when alcohol was the defining mark of the village ‘amli’, Woolgoolga Sikhs, who have otherwise adjusted well in Australia’s liberal way of life, abstain from liquor and continue to retain the distinguishing marks of their faith.

The gentle time warp that the rural Sikhs of Woolgoolga and Cordonvale seem to symbolise was not as evident elsewhere as a new breed of Punjabi began to trickle onto Australia’s shores in the early fifties. Many of these were students of agriculture offered scholarships under the Colombo Plan. They returned to help set up Punjab’s own agricultural university, while some continued on in Australia earning distinction in academic life.

With the collapse of colonialism and as the fledgling Australian nation began to find its feet independent of its mother country, it began to shed some of its insular mentality, engendered by an irrational fear of being overwhelmed by Asia’s hordes. After the war immigration was opened up to other Europeans. The country began building up substantive population of Greeks, Yugoslavs, even Lebanese. In the sixties it was the turn of the long-suffering aboriginal population, which finally won the right to vote and to own property in the dream-world of their forefathers. In 1976 a moderate Labour Government dropped the White Australia policy to give the continent a more healthy multi-coloured hue. Simultaneously it began to take greater interest in the countries around it rather than in remote homelands. Australia’s commerce and integration with its neighbours increased.

The results of this change are manifest in Australia’s towns and cities. Sydney and Melborne are now almost as cosmopolitan as New York or Los Angeles. US and Japanese investments and money bags fleeing Hong Kong (taken over by China in 1997) have transformed the landscape of many cities, urban New South Wales in particular. The economy has proved robust enough to withstand Japan’s prolonged recession, and now the Asian meltdown. (Japan was the largest buyer for Australia’s exports, while Indonesia was its largest investment destination). And with the Sydney Olympics around the corner, Australia moves confidently into the millennium.

And when it comes to moving who better than the restless Punjabi to rush down Australia’s freeways. So in just two decades of immigration there are an estimated 50,000 of them in the province of New South Wales alone, not a few of them former illegal immigrants. A highly visible population group with their distinctive appearance and never-say-die nonchalance, you can see them as they drive past in their taxis, many now owned by them, run buses, trains, man the dozens of Indian curry shops, all selling a uniform Mughlai cuisine, or wait for fare at the Mt Druitt taxi stand. Or you can hear them on Sunday at the gurdwaras, Sydney alone has four, denouncing each other with the same matter-of-factness with which they condemn the Indian Government for injuries, real or imagined, to their brethren in the mother country.

And while many of their White counterparts are pessimistic about the future voting (in recent years Australia lost more native English speakers through immigration, mostly to the USA, than it admitted), the Punjabis are full of hope and almost always willing to help a fellow Santa Singh in trouble. A few, like Sardar Milkha Singh, a retired veterinarian, and Dr Bawa are active in politics both at the level of the community and in local government through the Australian Labour Party.

Though most new arrivals are from professional backgrounds and begin life in the city, many succumb to the pull of their agricultural roots. Typifying this is Piara Singh Atwal, who resigned his job as town planner on the Paramatta city council to become a banana farmer in Woolgoolga, while bringing his planning skills to the town’s layout. Others moved to grape growing in the Hunter valley and in neighbouring Victoria.

Still, while largely optimistic on the country of their adoption, they are not entirely without worries. They worry about their children’s ability to understand Punjabi and the Sikh religion, and as if in affirmation of this, still prefer to come shopping in the Punjab. They also worry about racial discrimination, a worrying note of which was injected in to national politics recently by Pauline Hanson’s one-nation party.

But like their forefathers did a century ago, Punjabis are learning to cope, adapt the thrive in the wondrous world down under.

Still, if the residents were unable to completely shed their Punjabi streak of bull-headedness, they remained true to their rural ethos in more positive ways, too. Creatures of a more innocent age when alcohol was the defining mark of the village ‘amli’, Woolgoolga Sikhs, who have otherwise adjusted well in Australia’s liberal way of life, abstain from liquor and continue to retain the distinguishing marks of their faith.

The gentle time warp that the rural Sikhs of Woolgoolga and Cordonvale seem to symbolise was not as evident elsewhere as a new breed of Punjabi began to trickle onto Australia’s shores in the early fifties. Many of these were students of agriculture offered scholarships under the Colombo Plan. They returned to help set up Punjab’s own agricultural university, while some continued on in Australia earning distinction in academic life.

With the collapse of colonialism and as the fledgling Australian nation began to find its feet independent of its mother country, it began to shed some of its insular mentality, engendered by an irrational fear of being overwhelmed by Asia’s hordes. After the war immigration was opened up to other Europeans. The country began building up substantive population of Greeks, Yugoslavs, even Lebanese. In the sixties it was the turn of the long-suffering aboriginal population, which finally won the right to vote and to own property in the dream-world of their forefathers. In 1976 a moderate Labour Government dropped the White Australia policy to give the continent a more healthy multi-coloured hue. Simultaneously it began to take greater interest in the countries around it rather than in remote homelands. Australia’s commerce and integration with its neighbours increased.

The results of this change are manifest in Australia’s towns and cities. Sydney and Melborne are now almost as cosmopolitan as New York or Los Angeles. US and Japanese investments and money bags fleeing Hong Kong (taken over by China in 1997) have transformed the landscape of many cities, urban New South Wales in particular. The economy has proved robust enough to withstand Japan’s prolonged recession, and now the Asian meltdown. (Japan was the largest buyer for Australia’s exports, while Indonesia was its largest investment destination). And with the Sydney Olympics around the corner, Australia moves confidently into the millennium.

And when it comes to moving who better than the restless Punjabi to rush down Australia’s freeways. So in just two decades of immigration there are an estimated 50,000 of them in the province of New South Wales alone, not a few of them former illegal immigrants. A highly visible population group with their distinctive appearance and never-say-die nonchalance, you can see them as they drive past in their taxis, many now owned by them, run buses, trains, man the dozens of Indian curry shops, all selling a uniform Mughlai cuisine, or wait for fare at the Mt Druitt taxi stand. Or you can hear them on Sunday at the gurdwaras, Sydney alone has four, denouncing each other with the same matter-of-factness with which they condemn the Indian Government for injuries, real or imagined, to their brethren in the mother country.

And while many of their White counterparts are pessimistic about the future voting (in recent years Australia lost more native English speakers through immigration, mostly to the USA, than it admitted), the Punjabis are full of hope and almost always willing to help a fellow Santa Singh in trouble. A few, like Sardar Milkha Singh, a retired veterinarian, and Dr Bawa are active in politics both at the level of the community and in local government through the Australian Labour Party.

Though most new arrivals are from professional backgrounds and begin life in the city, many succumb to the pull of their agricultural roots. Typifying this is Piara Singh Atwal, who resigned his job as town planner on the Paramatta city council to become a banana farmer in Woolgoolga, while bringing his planning skills to the town’s layout. Others moved to grape growing in the Hunter valley and in neighbouring Victoria.

Still, while largely optimistic on the country of their adoption, they are not entirely without worries. They worry about their children’s ability to understand Punjabi and the Sikh religion, and as if in affirmation of this, still prefer to come shopping in the Punjab. They also worry about racial discrimination, a worrying note of which was injected in to national politics recently by Pauline Hanson’s one-nation party.

But like their forefathers did a century ago, Punjabis are learning to cope, adapt the thrive in the wondrous world down under.