Telia employs the use of archival materials, documentation and the creation of self-authored photographs as a means to reanimate and reexamine the experiences of the men who migrated from undivided India and worked as hawkers or travelling salesman within rural Australia during the late 19th and early to mid 20th centuries. Most often their purpose for migrating was to earn money for the extended families that they left behind. Telia was the name given to Australia by some of the family members who remained in India.

The men generally migrated alone from India as they were not initially permitted to bring wives or families to Australia. Most began hawking on foot, purchasing everyday household items from factories, wholesalers and stores in larger cities and walking vast distances to sell their wares to the occupants of remote settlements, farms and cattle stations. Eventually many of the men purchased a horse and wagon to better facilitate their hawking rounds. By the early 1950s the practice of hawking had become almost nonexistent due to the now widespread presence of motorable roads. Some of the men settled and started families in Australia, others returned to the subcontinent in their old age. Many of the men also died alone in Australia within a dominant culture that often struggled to accommodate their religious and cultural practices.