Soon after arrival in Australia, he was appointed Curator of the Nicholson Museum at the University of Sydney. He stunned the vice-chancellor by informing him that war would soon begin in Europe and that when it did, he would be heading home to enlist in the army. By the time Powell had left King Edward's School in 1930, he had confirmed his instinctive belief that peace was merely temporary and that the UK would be at war with Germany again. During his time in Australia as a professor, he grew increasingly angry at the appeasement of Germany and what he saw as a betrayal of the UK's national interests. After Neville Chamberlain's first visit to Adolf Hitler at Berchtesgaden, Powell wrote in a letter to his parents of 18 September 1938: