Push

&
Pull
Maltese-Australian

Migration

By the
mid-1960s
one-sixth of Malta's
population had emigrated to
Australia. Many have now
returned. Of Maltese heritage
himself, Barry York examines
the reasons for Maltese
migration and identifies
important sources of
research material

he place: a dot on the world

map known as Malta. The
date: unknown, but sometime
just before the Second World War.
My paternal grandfather, Salvatore

SEPTEMBER 1996

Meilak, has taken his son

Loreto up a narrow winding
staircase to the flat roof above the
family home. The Mediterranean
night sky is blacker than usual. Italy
has invaded Abyssinia and Mussolini
regards Malta as part of Italy. The
people in the seaboard town of Sliema
are experiencing blackout practice. All
street lights are out. All windows
covered. A trillion tiny stars provide
the only source of light, as my
grandfathernannu Salvuand his
son stand together on the roof. Like
all seamen, Salvu knows the sky well.
He has a star for each place he's
visited. Raising his pipe to his mouth,
he tells young Loreto tales of other
lands. He points his pipe to the

(top) 'God Bless Australia' nameplate,

together with religious icons, displayed
on the home of a returned Maltese
migrant in the village of Qala, Gozo
Photograph courtesy of Barry York

Marr harbour, on the island of Gozo,

Malta, the departure point for thousands
of Maltese emigrants during the first half
of this century
Photograph courtesy of Barry York

17

heavens and says: 'You see that star

over there? That's America; a fine
place.' And later: 'See that star over
there? That's England; the Mother
Country.' Then, turning south, he
points to the brightest of stars and
says: 'But that star, that very special
star, that star is Australia: 1-art fejn
hemm futur [the land of the future].'
One of my father's brothers, Joe,
had already left Malta for 1-art fejn
hemm futur in 1924 and, after many
years in quarries and road gangs,
found regular work on the Melbourne
waterfront. After the Second World
War, he would be the key link in a
chain migration by most of the
Meilak family, including Loreto (who
changed his surname to York while
stationed in London with the Royal
Air Force).
For most of this century Australia
has been 'the land of the future' for a
large proportion of the Maltese
people. As a base for the Royal Navy
guarding the approaches to the Suez
Canal, Malta assumed an importance
that it would otherwise not have had.
The British presence brought
prosperity and modernisation; and it
18

NATIONAL Library of Australia News

factory labour no longer needed in

large numbers by Australian industry
and with significant improvements to
Malta's standard of living and social
services, Maltese immigration
dwindled to a thousand or so per
year. In the 1980s even fewer came.
And by the 1990s Maltese emigration
was negligible and there is now a
notable return rate. Still, it remains
very hard to find a Maltese in Malta
who does not have a relative here, as I
discovered during a research trip in
November 1995.
A considerable body of literature
now exists on the Maltese in
Australiatheir patterns of settlement, struggles and achievements.
The National Library's holdings on
Maltese migration are listed in
Maltese Migration: An Annotated
Guide to Research Sources (1993).

Important non-book sources include

periodicals such as the Maltese Herald,
a bilingual weekly published in
Sydney since 1961, and the Maltese
Australian Studies Series published by
the Australian National University
since 1992. The Library's Oral
History Collection includes
interviews with 42 Maltese
Australians; a list with synopses being
available in Oral History: An
Annotated Guide to Oral History
Recordings of Relevance to the Maltese
Experience in Australia (1995). The

(above) Cover of Empire and Race: The

Maltese in Australia 1881-1949
by Barry York
Kensington: New South Wales University Press,
1990
Reproduced with the permission of the author

(opposite) Michael Xerri, a returned

migrant, outside 'Aussie', his home at
Xewkija, Gozo, in Malta
Photograph courtesy of Barry York

(opposite, top) Examples of passport

applications by prospective Australian
immigrants, Maltese Archives
Photograph courtesy of Barry York

SEPTEMBER 1996

brought insecurity and periodic

economic crises. After the First World
War thousands of Maltese working
people were thrown out of work by
the winding down of the British naval
presence. The dockyards were the hub
of the economy and, when the same
thing happened after the Second
World War, the Maltese were again
compelled to seek a future for
themselves and their children abroad.
Most chose Australia, which
implemented an assisted passage
scheme in 1949. By 1966, one-sixth
of the total population of Malta55 000 out of a total population of
around 315 000had settled in
Australia. During the 1970s, with

Pictorial Collection holds

photographic portraits of Maltese
Australians plus an album of
fieldwork photographs taken in
western Sydney for the Maltese
Australian Folklife Project. In
Manuscripts, there are collections of
prominent MalteseAustralian
writers, such as Manwel NicholasBorg.
My book Empire and Race: The
Maltese in Australia 1881-1949

remains the definitive historical work.

It approached the subject as a study
of the 'push' and 'pull' factors
influencing migration, using
conventional historical sources
combined with oral history
interviews.
`Oral history' allowed two
important questions to be answered,
namely, why did so many individuals
decide to leave Malta, and what was
the lure of Australia over other
19

possible
destinations? While these 'push' and
`pull' questions could be answered
through interviews, and by studying
publications about the conditions in
Malta and Australia at particular
points in time, a complete answer
necessitated a visit to the source of
migration itself.
Migration is, above all else, a deeply
human phenomenon, one which
provokes the extremes of human
emotion: anguish, happiness,
alienation, courage, regret, bitterness,
optimism, disenchantment, faith.
What was it that Maltese migrants
left behind? Why was it that
Josephine Cauchi, sitting outside her
home in Port Adelaide 70 years after
migrating, her trajbu on her lap
making Maltese lace the way her
mother and grandmother made it,
could sadly tell me that 'the sky over
Australia is, at least, the same sky that
is over Malta'?
To understand Maltese migration it
is necessary to understand the way
of life left behind physically, but
retained as part of the migrant's
invisible luggage. To capture the
essential humanity of the migration/
settlement experience it is necessary to
understand the place migrants came
from.
My month in Malta taught me
about the differences between the two
countries and the difficulties that
many experienced in adjusting to
Australia, especially the western
suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney
20

where
most settled.
Mixing
with
people in Malta who
had never migratedand
contrasting them with recent
returneeshelped to develop my
views on the multifaceted character
and psyche of the Maltese people. I
learned of the differences within
Maltese culture; differences between
rural villagers and city dwellers,
between Maltese on the main island
of Malta and those on the sister island
of Gozo, between the traditional
Maltese and the modern Maltese, and
between those who had never left
Malta and those who were returning
after three or four decades in
Australia.
On Gozo there is fascinating
architectural evidence of the success
of Maltese migration and the extent
of return migration. Driving around
the small island, whose shoreline is
only 43 km (compared to Malta's 136
km), one frequently comes across
large, recently built houses bearing
Australian insignia and nameplates.
Nomenclature tends to reflect
Australian flora, fauna and
landmarks, such as Koala Blue,
Sydney Tower, Wombat Maison,
Kangaroo, Villa Koala, Aussie
Cottage, Yarra River, Waratah Lodge,
Australian Beauty and Sydney Opera
House. There were also several
declaring 'God Bless Australia' and
one, curiously, 'God Save Australia'.
Other nameplates paid tribute to
suburbs and regions where the
Maltese settled: Altona, Blacktown,
Glenroy, Girraween, West Sydney,
Mackay. The Australian coat of arms

was a common emblem, as were

kangaroo statuettes on rooftops or
silhouettes worked into the design
of wrought-iron gates.
The isolated, predominantly
agricultural Gozitans saw little
difference between migrating to
the main island of Malta or to
Australia; all that really mattered
was that they were leaving Gozo.
Such subtleties are learned best,
most starkly and completely, at the
source of the migrationtheir
homeland.
I had read many reports of the wild,
emotional scenes in Malta's harbour
as emigrant ships departed for
Australia and I had listened to the
tear-filled reminiscences of people
who experienced them. But there is
something special, something
inspirational from a writer's
viewpoint, in actually visiting such
sites and feeling or imagining what
happened.
At a more practical level, Malta also
proved to be a good source of archival

MALTASE
CONNECTION

MICHAEL DUGAN

(above) Cover of The Maltese Connection:

Australia and MaltaA Bond of People
by Michael Dugan
Melbourne: Macmillan in association with
Special Broadcasting Service, 1988
Reproduced with permission of the
Special Broadcasting Service

(top) An Australian coat of arms carved

into the facade of the home of a returned
migrant, Gozo, Malta
Photograph courtesy of Barry York

NATIONAL Library of Australia News

material. Modern technology, from

microfilm to the Internet, tends to
break down the geographical barriers
to information sharing between
countriesbut only to an extent. At
the Malta Archives, I was shown
thousands of recently uncovered
passport applications dating back to
the nineteenth century. Those since
1915 bear a photo of each prospective
emigrant. The applications have been
indexed and I quickly found my uncle
Joe'sGuiseppi Meilak's-1924
application.
Malta's National Library is another
excellent resource. Founded in 1776,
the Library's holdings reflect the
amazing cultural heritage of Malta.
The Manuscripts Collection, for
example, includes the Archives of the
Order of St John. Printed collections
of Melitensia are divided into items
published before and after 1500.
Researchers of migration will find
materials published over the last two
centuries of great use. Under a 'legal
deposit' system similar to Australia's,

the National Library of Malta receives

copies of all Maltese publications. As
Malta was a British colony between
1814 and 1964, many official records
and publications were in English.
My time in Malta convinced me of
the importance of researching in both
old and new homelands in order to
understand more completely the
migration and settlement experience.
It taught me that Maltese culture is
itself proof of 'unity through
diversity'. And it taught me that to
overlook the differences within ethnic
cultures in Australia is to miss an
essential part of our own nation's
multiculturalism.

BARRY YORK (pictured

below) is a
Research Fellow in the Centre for
Immigration and Multicultural
Studies Centre at the Australian
National University

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