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.