A passionate Aussie campaigner for India’s ‘toy trains’

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The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway Photo Credit: Shekhar Ghoshal

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 28.10.2007 (IANS): Sydney, Oct 26 (IANS) : An Australian professor’s childhood fascination for trains combined with academic conviction has made him a passionate campaigner for some of India’s most romantic mountain railways.

Robert Lee, an associate professor at the School of Humanities and Languages at the University of Western Sydney, has been instrumental in two Indian railways – the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway and the Nilgiri Mountain Railway – winning World Heritage status in 1999 and 2004 respectively.

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More and more Aussies soaking up ‘Incredible India’ experience

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By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 23.09.2007 (IANS): While Australia is becoming a favoured destination for Indians asking “Where the bloody hell are you?”, Aussies are going in steadily large numbers for the “Incredible India” experience. With only 50,000 Aussies travelling to India in 2003, the number shot up to 106,000 in 2006 and this year has seen an increase of about 18 percent.

“We are hoping to see 130,000 Aussies visiting India by the end of this year,” says the regional director of the Indian Tourism Office in Sydney, Shanker Dhar. “We are hoping to see 130,000 Aussies visiting India by the end of this year,” says the regional director of the Indian Tourism Office in Sydney, Shanker Dhar.

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Only one Hindu in 1828 New South Wales Census

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By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 19.09.2007(IANS): Hinduism may be the fastest growing religion in Australia. But there was only one Hindu amongst the 36,000 or so residents in the 1828 census of the state of New South Wales.

Australia’s first Hindu stockman, Ramdial, who was born most probably in 1788, arrived in Australia aboard the ship Mary in 1818 with Sophia Browne, the wife of his employer William Merchant Browne, and three of Browne’s children from Calcutta (now Kolkata).

“William Browne of the Browne & Turner firm, which was a tea company in Calcutta, was born in Lucknow, educated in Britain and was employed in the East India Company before he took over the family business. In 1810, he decided to come to Australia for the opportunities offered by the relatively new British colony,” said Brad Argent, a spokesperson for Ancestry, the world’s biggest provider of family history data.

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