Sikh taxi driver who turned millionaire hit hard in Oz bushfires

Adelaide: The story of Charanamat Singh, the Sikh taxi driver-turned-millionaire in Northern Australia, has all the trappings of a rags-to-riches Bollywood thriller.



However, the gritty farmer was turned into a pauper overnight after the recent bushfires in Victoria destroyed his 150-acre farm, buildings and equipment worth millions of dollars.



�Every thing was gutted in front our eyes in the last week of February 2009. Over 200 people died in the area due to fires that left no time for anyone to flee. I thank the Almighty that all of us, my wife, children, brother and father, managed to stay alive,� Singh told visiting Indian journalists in Melbourne.



A devout Sikh, 55-year-old Singh who hails from Phillaur district, had left his native land disenchanted with militancy in Punjab in 1986.



Initially, he started as a taxi driver in Melbourne, the home of the large Indian expatriate community, and never looked back. Burning with an urge to become a farmer, like his family members back in Phillaur, Singh, by dint of hard work, made it big after he managed to save enough to own few taxies and later mobilised bank loans to buy large tracts of land, about 50 km from Melbourne where he grew broccoli and beans and produced bottled water from the water springs in his farm.






http://www.SikhPress.com