It was in Invercargill that Richardson began his career in journalism at the "Southland Times" and later the "Southland Daily News". After a brief stint as a reporter in Australia, he went to India to live and work at Nilokheri, a co-operative community north of New Delhi. In 1951 he moved to Britain, where he had great difficulty finding any kind of employment as a result of the depressed, still rationed, postwar economy. Of this period in his life he subsequently wrote in his autobiography: