With the approval of the Czechoslovak authorities, he arrived with his wife and five children in Adelaide in March 1967 to take up a two-year visiting position at the newly established Flinders University of South Australia. His wife and children departed Australia on 20 August 1968, in time for the children to start the new School year in September. While they were on their way, the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia took place. They landed in Zürich, but all communications with Czechoslovakia were severed. They had no entry visa to any country, so the Swiss authorities put them on a plane back to Australia that day. Thus started his twenty-year sojourn in Australia.