At the end of World War II, bandurist Hryhory Bazhul emigrated to Sydney, Australia where he continued to perform for the Ukrainian community.

To mark the 100th anniversary of Taras Shevchenko death the group gave a series of concerts in Sydney and Melbourne and also produced a recording of four songs from their repertoire.

[1] By 1963, after some 39 rehearsals (2–3 per month), five individuals of adult age and various levels of musical and vocal ability worked diligently to create a 17-song repertoire.

The development of repertoire was also an obstacle since no one in the group had suitable experience in arranging vocal works, as was the problem of duplication of musical scores.

Repertoire collected by Bazhul from various sources was initially used and gradually all the other problems were overcome by sheer effort, which testifies to the tenacity of this ensemble and its founder.

Then unexpectedly personal difficulties saw some of the members leave and now finding itself vocally incomplete the quintet ceased its activities in February 1964.

In time the small group made numerous independent performances and also on many occasions accompanied the Boyan Choir under the direction of Vasyl Matiash.

[1] Deriashnyj joined Bazhul's small group of 5 bandurists in November 1967 and encouraged the existing members to include vocal study into the weekly practice routine.

In March 1971, ten bandurists with bassist Oless Tindyk gave an important concert in Newcastle dedicated to the bard Taras Shevchenko.

This change did not sit well with some of the bandurists that were still wrestling with membership voting issues, let alone accept a new leader, the result being that the Ensemble lost four experienced members in that year.

[4] All the hard work paid off and in November 1975 the Ensemble together with the students of the Sydney School of Bandura gave a concert entitled "In the footsteps of the minstrels" (Шляхами Кобзарів).

[5] In June 1974, finding itself somewhat vocally incomplete, the Ensemble could not celebrate its 10th anniversary with a concert, instead a low-key social event took place.

But simultaneously, a young university student - Peter Chochula with a bass voice showing great potential began to study the art through private tuition from Deriashnyj.

After some 14 months work the master tape was accidentally erased and recording began a fresh—but with a higher performance standard and much more instrumental and vocal precision and eventually in 1978 the LP entitled Bandura and Song was released for sale.

The banduras for these ensembles came from Ukraine and were of the Chernihiv type - some were even equipped with mechanisms that enabled the rapid changing of the key to which the instrument was tuned.

A grant was received from the Australia Arts Council to organize a bandura seminar and to pay for a special guest teacher and performer from the USA.

In the following years this powerful choral instrumental combination saw concert performances in Brisbane, Newcastle, Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne.

At this time much of Deriashnyj's attention was directed toward the Ivasiuk Folk Ensemble so the bandura group's assistant director, Peter Chochulla, took on the capella-master role, managing and organising rehearsals.