Push& Pull

Maltese-AustralianMigration

By themid-1960sone-sixth of Malta'spopulation had emigrated toAustralia. Many have nowreturned. Of Maltese heritagehimself, Barry York examinesthe reasons for Maltesemigration and identifiesimportant sources ofresearch material

The place: a dot on the worldmap known as Malta. Thedate: unknown, but sometime

just before the Second World War.My paternal grandfather, Salvatore

Meilak, has taken his sonLoreto up a narrow winding

staircase to the flat roof above thefamily home. The Mediterraneannight sky is blacker than usual. Italyhas invaded Abyssinia and Mussoliniregards Malta as part of Italy. Thepeople in the seaboard town of Sliemaare experiencing blackout practice. Allstreet lights are out. All windowscovered. A trillion tiny stars providethe only source of light, as mygrandfather—nannu Salvu—and hisson stand together on the roof. Likeall seamen, Salvu knows the sky well.He has a star for each place he'svisited. Raising his pipe to his mouth,he tells young Loreto tales of otherlands. He points his pipe to the

(top) 'God Bless Australia' nameplate,together with religious icons, displayedon the home of a returned Maltesemigrant in the village of Qala, GozoPhotograph courtesy of Barry York

Marr harbour, on the island of Gozo,Malta, the departure point for thousandsof Maltese emigrants during the first halfof this centuryPhotograph courtesy of Barry York

SEPTEMBER 1996 17

heavens and says: 'You see that starover there? That's America; a fineplace.' And later: 'See that star overthere? That's England; the MotherCountry.' Then, turning south, hepoints to the brightest of stars andsays: 'But that star, that very specialstar, that star is Australia: 1-art fejnhemm futur [the land of the future].'

One of my father's brothers, Joe,had already left Malta for 1-art fejnhemm futur in 1924 and, after manyyears in quarries and road gangs,found regular work on the Melbournewaterfront. After the Second WorldWar, he would be the key link in achain migration by most of theMeilak family, including Loreto (whochanged his surname to York whilestationed in London with the RoyalAir Force).

For most of this century Australiahas been 'the land of the future' for alarge proportion of the Maltesepeople. As a base for the Royal Navyguarding the approaches to the SuezCanal, Malta assumed an importancethat it would otherwise not have had.The British presence broughtprosperity and modernisation; and it

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(above) Cover of Empire and Race: TheMaltese in Australia 1881-1949by Barry YorkKensington: New South Wales University Press,1990Reproduced with the permission of the author

(opposite) Michael Xerri, a returnedmigrant, outside 'Aussie', his home atXewkija, Gozo, in MaltaPhotograph courtesy of Barry York

(opposite, top) Examples of passportapplications by prospective Australianimmigrants, Maltese ArchivesPhotograph courtesy of Barry York

brought insecurity and periodiceconomic crises. After the First WorldWar thousands of Maltese workingpeople were thrown out of work bythe winding down of the British navalpresence. The dockyards were the hubof the economy and, when the samething happened after the SecondWorld War, the Maltese were againcompelled to seek a future forthemselves and their children abroad.

Most chose Australia, whichimplemented an assisted passagescheme in 1949. By 1966, one-sixthof the total population of Malta-55 000 out of a total population ofaround 315 000—had settled inAustralia. During the 1970s, with

factory labour no longer needed inlarge numbers by Australian industryand with significant improvements toMalta's standard of living and socialservices, Maltese immigrationdwindled to a thousand or so peryear. In the 1980s even fewer came.And by the 1990s Maltese emigrationwas negligible and there is now anotable return rate. Still, it remainsvery hard to find a Maltese in Maltawho does not have a relative here, as Idiscovered during a research trip inNovember 1995.

A considerable body of literaturenow exists on the Maltese inAustralia—their patterns of settle-ment, struggles and achievements.The National Library's holdings onMaltese migration are listed inMaltese Migration: An AnnotatedGuide to Research Sources (1993).Important non-book sources includeperiodicals such as the Maltese Herald,a bilingual weekly published inSydney since 1961, and the Maltese–Australian Studies Series published bythe Australian National Universitysince 1992. The Library's OralHistory Collection includesinterviews with 42 Maltese–Australians; a list with synopses beingavailable in Oral History: AnAnnotated Guide to Oral HistoryRecordings of Relevance to the MalteseExperience in Australia (1995). ThePictorial Collection holdsphotographic portraits of Maltese–Australians plus an album offieldwork photographs taken inwestern Sydney for the Maltese–Australian Folklife Project. InManuscripts, there are collections ofprominent Maltese–Australianwriters, such as Manwel Nicholas-Borg.

My book Empire and Race: TheMaltese in Australia 1881-1949remains the definitive historical work.It approached the subject as a studyof the 'push' and 'pull' factorsinfluencing migration, usingconventional historical sourcescombined with oral historyinterviews.

`Oral history' allowed twoimportant questions to be answered,namely, why did so many individualsdecide to leave Malta, and what wasthe lure of Australia over other

SEPTEMBER 1996 19

MICHAEL DUGAN

possibledestinations? While these 'push' and`pull' questions could be answeredthrough interviews, and by studyingpublications about the conditions inMalta and Australia at particularpoints in time, a complete answernecessitated a visit to the source ofmigration itself.

Migration is, above all else, a deeplyhuman phenomenon, one whichprovokes the extremes of humanemotion: anguish, happiness,alienation, courage, regret, bitterness,optimism, disenchantment, faith.What was it that Maltese migrantsleft behind? Why was it thatJosephine Cauchi, sitting outside herhome in Port Adelaide 70 years aftermigrating, her trajbu on her lapmaking Maltese lace the way hermother and grandmother made it,could sadly tell me that 'the sky overAustralia is, at least, the same sky thatis over Malta'?

To understand Maltese migration itis necessary to understand the wayof life left behind physically, butretained as part of the migrant'sinvisible luggage. To capture theessential humanity of the migration/settlement experience it is necessary tounderstand the place migrants camefrom.

My month in Malta taught meabout the differences between the twocountries and the difficulties thatmany experienced in adjusting toAustralia, especially the westernsuburbs of Melbourne and Sydney

wheremost settled.

Mixing withpeople in Malta who

had never migrated—andcontrasting them with recentreturnees—helped to develop myviews on the multifaceted characterand psyche of the Maltese people. Ilearned of the differences withinMaltese culture; differences betweenrural villagers and city dwellers,between Maltese on the main islandof Malta and those on the sister islandof Gozo, between the traditionalMaltese and the modern Maltese, andbetween those who had never leftMalta and those who were returningafter three or four decades inAustralia.

On Gozo there is fascinatingarchitectural evidence of the successof Maltese migration and the extentof return migration. Driving aroundthe small island, whose shoreline isonly 43 km (compared to Malta's 136km), one frequently comes acrosslarge, recently built houses bearingAustralian insignia and nameplates.Nomenclature tends to reflectAustralian flora, fauna andlandmarks, such as Koala Blue,Sydney Tower, Wombat Maison,Kangaroo, Villa Koala, AussieCottage, Yarra River, Waratah Lodge,Australian Beauty and Sydney OperaHouse. There were also severaldeclaring 'God Bless Australia' andone, curiously, 'God Save Australia'.Other nameplates paid tribute tosuburbs and regions where theMaltese settled: Altona, Blacktown,Glenroy, Girraween, West Sydney,Mackay. The Australian coat of arms

was a common emblem, as werekangaroo statuettes on rooftops orsilhouettes worked into the designof wrought-iron gates.

The isolated, predominantlyagricultural Gozitans saw littledifference between migrating tothe main island of Malta or toAustralia; all that really mattered

was that they were leaving Gozo.Such subtleties are learned best,

most starkly and completely, at thesource of the migration—theirhomeland.

I had read many reports of the wild,emotional scenes in Malta's harbouras emigrant ships departed forAustralia and I had listened to thetear-filled reminiscences of peoplewho experienced them. But there issomething special, somethinginspirational from a writer'sviewpoint, in actually visiting suchsites and feeling or imagining whathappened.

At a more practical level, Malta alsoproved to be a good source of archival

MALTASECONNECTION

(above) Cover of The Maltese Connection:Australia and Malta—A Bond of Peopleby Michael DuganMelbourne: Macmillan in association withSpecial Broadcasting Service, 1988Reproduced with permission of theSpecial Broadcasting Service

(top) An Australian coat of arms carvedinto the facade of the home of a returnedmigrant, Gozo, MaltaPhotograph courtesy of Barry York

20 NATIONAL Library of Australia News

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material. Modern technology, frommicrofilm to the Internet, tends tobreak down the geographical barriersto information sharing betweencountries—but only to an extent. Atthe Malta Archives, I was shownthousands of recently uncoveredpassport applications dating back tothe nineteenth century. Those since1915 bear a photo of each prospectiveemigrant. The applications have beenindexed and I quickly found my uncleJoe's—Guiseppi Meilak's-1924application.

Malta's National Library is anotherexcellent resource. Founded in 1776,the Library's holdings reflect theamazing cultural heritage of Malta.The Manuscripts Collection, forexample, includes the Archives of theOrder of St John. Printed collectionsof Melitensia are divided into itemspublished before and after 1500.Researchers of migration will findmaterials published over the last twocenturies of great use. Under a 'legaldeposit' system similar to Australia's,

the National Library of Malta receivescopies of all Maltese publications. AsMalta was a British colony between1814 and 1964, many official recordsand publications were in English.

My time in Malta convinced me ofthe importance of researching in bothold and new homelands in order tounderstand more completely themigration and settlement experience.It taught me that Maltese culture isitself proof of 'unity throughdiversity'. And it taught me that tooverlook the differences within ethniccultures in Australia is to miss anessential part of our own nation'smulticulturalism.

BARRY YORK (pictured below) is aResearch Fellow in the Centre forImmigration and MulticulturalStudies Centre at the AustralianNational University

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