Manmeet Singh Bedi didn’t expect a family curiosity to turn into a discovery that would rewrite his sense of belonging and challenge what many Australians assume about Indian migration.
The turning point came when he traced his line further back than family lore. “My great-great-grandfather came here in 1885,” he says. Like many, he grew up believing the common narrative: that significant Indian migration to Australia only began in the 1970s, after the White Australia policy ended.
“I knew my grandfather, Teja Singh Grewal, came in 1947. He was a pioneer who helped build the first Sikh temple in Woolgoolga,” says Bedi. “But they’d always told me, ‘We’ve been here for a very long time.’ I just thought it was made up. I was going, ‘No Indians have been here that long.’”
Yet there was an early twist in his own story. “Funny enough, I was born in Norway,” he says. “We migrated back. So technically, I’m first generation, even though I’m fifth.” That contradiction—first and fifth at once—captures the complexity of identity he has lived with for decades.
On visits to India, he was the foreigner, the ‘firangi.’ Like so many children of the diaspora, he felt caught between two worlds. “There’s always a part of you that feels somewhat missing. You’re kind of in between two worlds.”
A Melbourne-based tech worker, Bedi decided to bring that analytical mindset to the past. He began searching—following hints, databases and records through the National Archives.
The digital trail led him to a trove of documents: a British passport, a Certificate of Exemption from the White Australia era, and personal letters. He even discovered a four-year-old uncle whose existence his 96-year-old grandfather never knew about.
He then connected with Len Kenna and Crystal Jade of the Australian Indian Historical Society, the guardians of this overlooked past. They had interviewed his great-grandfather and confirmed a story Bedi had dismissed as family legend: that his ancestors, upon landing at the Port of Melbourne, walked 4,000 kilometres to the cane fields of Far North Queensland.
“They said, ‘No, that’s historical fact,’” Bedi recalls. “A number of people died. Aboriginal people helped them through the bush.”
The stories were humbling and extraordinary. To communicate, they would moo like cows for milk or mime chickens laying eggs. They were British subjects from Punjab, helping to prop up a pre-federation Australian economy as hawkers, cane cutters, and banana farmers.
This discovery was seismic. “It completely changed the way I saw myself,” he says. “For the first time in almost 40 years, I feel like I’m part of both worlds. I can stand a lot taller.”
But when he tried to explain this deep history to his two young children, he hit a wall. “They’re like, ‘Was that when you were born?’ It just went above their head.”
So he decided to write it down. The result is a children’s picture book with a poetic title: Where the Mustard Fields Meet the Southern Cross. It evokes the mustard fields of Punjab under the Southern Cross constellation, a journey from one world to another, ending with the line, “Two worlds, one loving home.”
“I did it for my children,” he says. “I wanted them to know that our history runs very deep here.” His three-year-old is now obsessed, requesting it every night. “He understands now. When they hear ‘1885’, they get it.”
Self-published last December, the book has sold hundreds of copies and sparked conversations far beyond the Indian community. Friends of Polish, Irish, and Greek descent have approached him, sharing their own migrant family stories. “It opened up this beautiful conversation that, unless you’re a First Nations person, everyone here is a migrant.”
The book is more than a family history; it’s a deliberate intervention in the national story. Bedi feels a new responsibility as a custodian of this legacy. “If you’re told to ‘go back to where you come from’, it’s like, ‘Well, I probably came here before you did.’ It changes the discussion.”
He has met with mayors and MPs, sharing the story not for sales, but for recognition. “We’ve been here for over 140 years. We should know that and be very proud of that.”
Does knowing this deep history free him from having to prove his Australianness? “I think it probably creates more pressure, to be honest. You still probably don’t feel fully accepted… but I understand where I belong now.”
His quest has reframed the migrant’s question. It is no longer “How do I belong?” but “What do I want to build, knowing I already belong?”
As historian Len Kenna told him: “How can a tree stand tall if it doesn’t have strong roots?” Bedi has found his roots, buried deep in Australian soil for 140 years. Now, through a simple children’s book, he is ensuring a new generation can grow up standing tall, knowing their story is, and always has been, part of this country’s story.
“You should carry kindness across every ocean,” he says, explaining the message of his book.
Perhaps that is the quiet power of his discovery: it doesn’t just locate one family in history. It widens the map of who has always been here and the legacy carried forward.
Where the Mustard Fields Meet the Southern Cross is available to purchase. Click here.
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