The historical ties between our two islands, Malta being one of the smallest island nations on earth and Australia, for good contrast, one of the largest, revert to the earliest days of British colonisation of this continent.

For several millennia prior to those days, the indigenous peoples of this land, Australia, had cohabited in consonance with their “Dreaming”, until that seemingly endless existence was intruded upon by a light coloured race from beyond the limits of their universe.

But these inquisitive seafarers from yonder were not only British. As we know from historical research, they included French, Dutch, Spaniards and others, who wandered around the Australian waters. Some landed and stayed, others moved on.

It is well documented that Maltese seamen were engaged in the services of the principal European colonisers from the earliest days. Among these early venturers who stopped at various isolated inlets on the northern and along the western Australian coastline, were some seamen who jumped ship and remained here. Whatever became of these early individual European men is mostly left to conjecture.

Among those who sailed from Britain in their convict fleets from 1788 onwards, there were a number of Maltese convicts (Bovingdon, 2000). At that stage, Malta had not yet become a British protectorate, but there were already several Maltese engaged in the services of the British Crown, especially in the merchant navy. A formal relationship between Britain and Malta did not come into existence until the Treaty of Amiens in 1802 (Cassar, 2000).

Later, commercial shipping also brought a number of Maltese stowaways. It is anyone’s guess what became of these early settlers! All we know is that a number of Maltese, willingly or otherwise, formed part of the earliest European settlers to come to Australia. But there are problems extracting from the official lists of the time which persons were of Maltese origin, unless specifically stated in the documentation. On the one hand, the recording of names was not fussed over too much. The recording officers spelt the names (both Christian names and surnames), according to their English phonetics naturally, in what they thought was the correct way, leaving dubious spellings for present day researchers to ponder over and to look deeper into other sources, where and when available. Also, important biographical information, such as place of birth, was often left unrecorded in the assizes and musters. Frequently, Maltese surnames were confused, and remain so to this day, with Italian ones. To further complicate matters, as Malta’s ties with Britain grew closer, many Maltese often described themselves as British. To add to the confusion, in time, many Maltese married British personnel, as indeed happened with so many Australian Aboriginal women who married or partnered with Irish men and then adopted British surnames. Hence, to give just a few examples, well established Maltese surnames such as Pace, Muscat, Scerri/Xerri, Falzon, Micallef, and so on, have often been confused with similar sounding British surnames like Paice, Muskett, Sherry, Falson and McAuliffe. On the other hand, well-established Maltese surnames with Italian and Spanish sounding names, such as Bartolo, DeBono, Inguanez, Sciortino, Pisani, Bonnici and so forth, have often led to unfair credits being attributed to non-Maltese people.

As a community with its own ethnicity from the earliest days of recorded history, the Maltese have never really been overly conspicuous. Originating as they do from a small group of islands in the centre of that ancient and historical part of the world, the Mediterranean, they never really felt the need to promote themselves in any particular manner. And neither have their governments ever been in the forefront, pushing the propaganda machinery before a world audience. This I identify as one of the main reasons why we, as a group, have never really featured on any particular societal level as somehow outstanding or excelling. It has been suggested in bygone days that, owing to Malta’s relative geographical smallness, the Maltese may have collectively felt somewhat less capable than others. I do not subscribe to this theory. It has never been substantiated with hard evidence. Personally, I have never felt inferior or superior to any of my fellow human beings, whatever their origins. Potentially, we’re all in the same boat. As for the Maltese as a group, they have silently plodded on, in whichever country they have settled in large numbers, and have proven themselves as good as their best counterparts.

The reality of our presence in an Australian milieu is, that on a relative scale, we match all levels of societal achievement. There’s just no human excuse why the Maltese, as members of the human race, should not be naturally endowed with equal cultural and intellectual potential. We just don’t go around with a rowdy brass band pronouncing ourselves to the outside world.

You may rightfully be wondering how this line of argumentation relates to my opening claim of being as Australian as any other Australian. That raises the question of “who is Australian?” Indeed, it then follows “who is Maltese?” Who are we anyway, all of us, wherever we may have been born and bred? What makes us what and who we are? Is it merely an official document such as a passport or a citizenship certificate, declaring us with a certain label? That might suffice in legal jargon but, ultimately, it is an individual’s innate “allegiance”, his/her inner private feelings, which identify him/her as belonging to one group or another. It is what we ourselves feel comfortable with.

I feel as Australian as any other person with the same claim. An Australian who was born and bred overseas, of an English father and a Maltese mother, who has lived in all three countries, Malta, England and Australia, and who happens to speak more than one language. Incidentally, Sir Gerald Strickland, who later became Lord Strickland, while sitting in the House of Commons also occupied the post of Prime Minister of Malta, is the same Gerald Strickland who was at one time Governor of New South Wales, Tasmania and Western Australia. He shared a similar background to mine, being born in Malta of a Maltese mother and an English father. Now there is a close historical and political tie between Australia and Malta. Perhaps not many are aware of that chapter in our Australian past.

Having revealed that snippet of information, binding our two countries in a certain commonality, let us see what factors identify us as Australians. While I also like to think of myself as a citizen of the world, I cannot deny a special affinity with both Australia as well as Malta. Yet my feelings towards England, my grandfather’s country of origin are, understandably, considerably less intense. Because that part of my upbringing happened in the very distant past, as I was far too young to have built up a sufficiently solid psychological bond for it to exert a lifelong influence upon my personality. Also, my father, though he always considered himself so very English, was actually born and spent the earlier years of his life in Cape Town, South Africa.

In spite of all these interlacing factors I have alluded to, there are nevertheless, certain traits and experiences and sympathies, which every group comes to share, as identifying factors peculiar only to their group, distinguishing them from all the rest. Hence we refer to ourselves as Australians, Maltese, British, Italians and so forth, in an attempt to perhaps better understand each other through these various factors.

I, as a Maltese, as an Australian, feel at one with the rest in a common “national” inheritance I share with the people of this land. But these are vague terms. To me, a common national inheritance does not imply that my personal values are precisely the same as my next-door neighbour’s. Belonging to and identifying with a certain group does not confer or indeed impose upon me or anyone else, the populist notion of the “ocker” Australian. The urban dwellers of Sydney’s northern beaches and those of Sydney’s outer western suburbs, the mining community of Mt Isa and the stockmen of outback Australia, Darwinians and residents of the Snowy Mountains, and all the rest; these are all Australians, with all their convergences and divergences. Values and mores and traditions change, not only with the ebb and flow of the tides, but they are just as pliable according to the topography of the land, climatic conditions, and umpteen other factors impinging upon us as humans.

As a member of the human race, and therefore as a Maltese, as an Australian, I see myself as no better and no worse than any other group. I see myself as subject to the flaws and weaknesses that all humans, wherever they may reside, are prone to. These innate human flaws and weaknesses, as we move along our life’s journey, are further enhanced and reinforced by the different “systems” of governance, religious beliefs, educational systems, our physical and climatic environments, and other factors, which mould and control how we interact and what we become. So that all the rest of the societal features so often popularised by the media and the powers that be, as the sine qua non which make us Australian or Maltese or indeed citizens of the world, in the end, are of little consequence in determining who and what we truly are.

I have lived in Australia for over the last five decades. I have taken an interest in several aspects of the Australian way of life. I have visited many different parts of this vast continent, mixed with all types, read the literature of this country’s thinkers and therefore, in summary, have well and truly inserted myself into Australiana. Some features I have taken to and assimilated into my own character. Others I have rejected and life goes on. The same applies to my Maltese background. Some aspects of the Maltese way of life appeal to me to the extent of becoming part of me, while others will never be admitted into my psyche. With all these various implants and transplants, my Australian-ness emerges in a more obvious manner when I visit Malta. The locals immediately identify me not merely as an overseas Maltese, but as a Maltese from Australia, in contrast to a Maltese from some other corner of the globe.

So, one might ask, how have the Maltese affected life in Australia? Considering that for several decades now, the Maltese have lived, toiled, interacted and settled in this land, and being among the numerically larger groups represented here, it is only natural to pose the question. But the answer is not obvious, by any means.

It all harks back to my earlier claim that the Maltese, as a group, have never high profiled themselves, unlike the practice of other groups, perhaps. As an example, how many times have we heard of the over preponderance of Maltese in the cane farming region of the north Queensland town of Mackay? Hardly ever. It is always either the Italians or someone else’s contribution that is evaluated, but never the Maltese. This despite the reality that in Mackay one can easily say that not only the sugar cane industry but the whole economy of that town derives its strength and energy from the overwhelming Maltese presence and contribution. Another two Queensland coastal townships where the presence of Maltese has left its impact, to a lesser extent than that of Mackay, are Innisfail and Bundaberg, also in the sugar cane industry.

The Boer War and the Anzac saga included a small number of Maltese soldiers who fought on behalf of this country with the Australian Army. One in particular was Colonel Dr Charles Mattei who was decorated for bravery. Colonel Mattei moved around Australia quite extensively. I have encountered his name in various parts of Australia, always with a certain degree of prominence. He was on the Board of the mining works in Queenstown, Mount Lyell and Mount Zeehan silver mines, in the former wilds of Tasmania, in the late 1800s. His name crops up again in Wyndham in North Western Australia as magistrate and Protector of Aborigines (whatever that title implied). He emerges again on the Hospital Board of Kalgoorlie and he practised at one time, in Macquarie Street, Sydney. We also encounter his name serving on the Board of the Rosemount General Hospital in Brisbane. This man, of such apparent prominence, is buried in the Northern Suburbs cemetery without even a slab to mark his resting place.

In Western Australia, one comes across a Maltese Canadian, Frederick W.P. Cammilleri (Bovingdon, 2007), who came to Australia as a young lad, initially to seek his fortunes in the pearling industry. He never returned to Canada. He is responsible for having discovered one of the richest veins of gold in Kalgoorlie and spent most of his days with the early prospectors roaming around that vast State, ever in search of the elusive treasure. His life is well documented in the archives of the Battie Library, in Perth.

The Strickland name, to which I alluded earlier on, lives on in Sydney through Strickland House at Vaucluse and on Rottnest Island, just outside Perth, where Strickland often retired to, mainly for the sake of his sick wife Edeline. On Rottnest Island there are a number of Bays named after members of the Strickland household, such as Mabel Bay, after one of his daughters.

In the late 1800s and continuing into the early 1900s, another pioneer Maltese gentleman left his mark on the holiday resort island of Brampton, in the Cumberland group, in Queensland’s famous Barrier Reef. Joseph Busuttin (Bovingdon, 2008) who married a local lass, lived an idyllic life with his family on this island and managed a couple of lesser-known Barrier Reef islands close by, for more than three decades. Yet nowhere do we find this man and his family, celebrated in our annals, as the true pioneering person he was. Until relatively recent times, the main swimming beach on this island carried the family name of Busuttin Bay, in memory of the pioneer family that opened up the island for European habitation. It is a pity that recent tourist maps and literature of Brampton Island ignore this early pioneering family’s contribution to the opening up of north Queensland’s tropical islands.

In Queenstown, Tasmania, according to an official letter I have from the mining company itself, there is a house named “Gozo Cottage”. Of course Gozo is the name of Malta’s sister island. This house bears remnants of the finest Maltese stonework. Early last century there were some 300 Maltese men employed in the mine works of Queenstown, Mount Margaret, Mount Lyell and Mount Zeehan, some of whose descendants left their distinct architectural mark in that little corner of Tasmania.

And what about the thousands of Maltese who inhabit the suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne? Their impact has been more of the communal rather than individual pioneering kind. In Sydney for instance, being generally of a fervent Catholic background, the Maltese have built an imposing church in Horsely Park. This suburb of outer western Sydney was settled by an overwhelming majority of Maltese in the 1920s, most of whom mostly originated from the northern Maltese township of Mellieha. The magnificent church they built is now part of Sydney’s architectural legacy. Each year on Good Friday, tourists from different parts of Australia flock to this site to witness the traditional Good Friday spectacle; the procession with its splendid array of statues carried through the streets of Horsely Park and the various volunteers dressed up as various biblical personalities, forming a pageant which has become a feature of Sydney life.

Again in the 1920s, in the Holroyd, Fairfield and Blacktown local government regions of Sydney, there were large settlements of Maltese, many of whom took to market gardening and poultry farming. Among their descendants are the well-known enterprises of Baiada and Cordina poultry complexes. Many of these original early settlers’ families have moved further afield into the Windsor, Richmond, Kurrajong regions to the north west of Sydney and around the Campbelltown, Warragamba, Luddenham regions to the south west. Their children have in turn, again silently and without any fanfare, succeeded not only in the manual chores they are traditionally associated with, but they are up there, with all the rest, in the arts, sciences, finance, politics, academe, medicine, philosophy, mathematics, engineering, chemistry, architectural design, town planning, music, literature, choreography, and wherever else our mutual human endeavour entices us to.

As for other every day influences that feature as part of the overall picture of social life in Australia, attributable to the Maltese presence, we have our own delicious cuisine comprising pastizzi, ravjul, gbejniet and the soft drink Kinnie. These untranslatable words and some others like nannu for granddad and nanna for grandmother, have become part of the local vocabulary in so many parts of leading Australian cities like Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, Mackay, Morwell and other regions where the Maltese numerical presence abounds, that I think they justifiably deserve an insert in our national Australian dictionaries.

I’ll conclude with a very brief reference to some notable Australian Maltese personalities who, along with the few I already mentioned, deserve a historical reminder for their efforts and the legacy they left to posterity.

In the Sydney district of Fairfield in the late 1920s and mid 1930s, there was an agricultural enthusiast, Charles George Parnis (Bovingdon, 2008), who took it on himself to educate his own Maltese countrymen in various aspects of rural and agricultural life. He did this through public lectures he gave in the Fairfield, Holroyd and Blacktown areas. He also contributed articles, of the same nature, to the local district newspapers in English.

From my point of view as a linguist, his major contribution to his own Maltese community was the pioneering of the first-ever Maltese language magazines and newspapers in Australia. Furthermore, I credit him with being not only the first Maltese language journalist in Australia going back to 1929, but also with having been the first to recognise the emergence of a new local Australian language form, the ethnolect, which is officially recognised as Maltralian (Maltraljan). This linguistic phenomenon is a development that has taken place in large, old established migrant groups, not only in Australia but also in other migrant-receiving countries such as Canada, the United States and Germany, whereby the native language baggage these groups carried with them to their countries of settlement evolved into a distinct language form, influenced by its new environment and in isolation from its former mother tongue.

Another person of interest from amongst the local Maltese, was a Catholic priest of the Salesian Order. To the credit of Father Joseph Ciantar (Bovingdon, 1988) is directly attributed the success of the Order in Australia, as he is said to have saved it from financial ruin in its early days when the Order was seriously considering total withdrawal from its Australian venture. But perhaps more lastingly significant is his establishment of Boys Town in Engadine, New South Wales.

Finally, the well-known Snowy Mountains scheme had its share of Maltese workers. The northern New South Wales railway line running through the townships of Dorrigo, Kyogle, Casino and further along, employed large numbers of Maltese during the Great Depression days. The mining town of Broken Hill in far western New South Wales and the gold prospecting works around the Sofala and Hill End regions saw many a Maltese come and go during the latter half of the 19th century and well into the 20th. Port Pirie, Port Augusta and Whyalla in South Australia and the Port Kembla steel works just south of Sydney could all, at one time, spin a good Maltese Australian yarn.

And here I am, five decades later, after docking in on my very first day of settlement in this land, at Wooloomooloo wharf, precisely on 14 January 1959, full of vigour with youth on my side and lots of enthusiasm, who ever would have forecast that one day I would stand here, in these premises of the Royal Australian Historical Society, and in the presence of representatives from State Records and from the National Archives, contributing, albeit my little portion to the historical annals of this marvellous nation.

(Dedicated to my two granddaughters – Sinead Rebecca and Erin Grace Bovingdon)

Written and delivered by the author at the Seminar – “Maltese migration and settlement in NSW”, at History House, 133 Macquarie Street, Sydney on Wednesday, 27 May 2009 at the invitation of State Records (NSW) and the Royal Australian Historical Society