Early Migration Chapter 5Author: Fr Lawrence E.Attard THE CALL OF AUSTRALIA Dr Richard Arthur was a prominent Australian politician. He was a member of the Australian Parliament and president of the Immigration League of Australasia. In 1912 Dr Arthur had written to Malta and suggested that Maltese emigrants should forget about Brazil and Canada and consider his own country as their land of opportunity. Emigration to Australia from Malta had begun during the latter half of the nineteenth century but it had never developed into a considerable movement chiefly because that country was considered as too distant. The suggestion of Dr Arthur however had reminded some Maltese of the suitability of that country as a second home. The call of Australia had been strong not only with the unemployed workers of Malta but also with the pro-British element in the island. The pro-British party in Malta hailed the land of the Southern Cross as a prosperous and stable part of the Empire and Maltese settlers in that country were not only assured of a democratic way of life but they would also guarantee Malta's ties with one of the largest possessions of the Crown. The scheme of free emigration to Brazil had failed and pro-British sympathisers had felt relieved that no Maltese were now emigrating to a country which was so foreign because it had no ties with the British Empire. Canada was a worthwhile proposition but its supposedly Arctic winters militated against Maltese settlement. Dr Richard Arthur advised against emigration to Canada and he thought that the warmer climate of Australia would be far more congenial to the Maltese. He doubted if the exceedingly cold weather of Canada would permit persons whose ancestors had lived for generations under the Maltese sun to eventually succeed in rearing children amid the snow and ice of North America. It was in September 1912 that news reached Malta that Australia was wooing immigrants in order to people the vast and empty territories to the north and west. Mr Percy Hunter director of Immigration for New South Wales had addressed a meeting at the Carlton Hotel in London organised by the Millions Club, where he stated that Australia needed some 15,000,000 settlers to swell the population to 20,000,000. This, Mr Hunter claimed, was the figure his government wanted to reach in order to avert any influx of Asians into the country. Australia was then pursuing a Whites Only immigration policy and the leaders of that country felt that it was Britain's task to help White and loyal immigrants settle in Australia. Such a policy would ensure a homogenous population and would also guarantee Australia's strong ties with the Mother country. Dr Richard Arthur was of the opinion that the Maltese were ideally suited to people the Northern Territory of Australia because they were White and loyal and used to work in a hot climate. Great Britain was incapable of providing all the fifteen million settlers that Australia needed. And if there were not enough men and women from Great Britain willing to emigrate to Australia, were not the Maltese the next best choice? Pro-British commentators in Malta had no doubt as to the obvious affirmative query. Their reasons for Malta's special claim to entry into Australia were loudly proclaimed: "We have the same flag as Englishmen and Australians. Our skin is about as fair, except for the tanning done by a semitropical sun. We are as proud of our place in the Empire as they are of theirs. Our physique is all that could be desired by the most fastidious selectors of immigrants. Our moral qualities are above dispute". Dr Richard had visited Malta and he had acquired first hand knowledge of the island and its inhabitants. In a letter written at Parliament House, Sydney, dated March 26th 1912, he said that he had been in contact with various Maltese citizens and had repeatedly stated that Australia offered the Maltese a splendid field for their services, especially in the northern regions of the country where the Maltese could face the climate better than Anglo-Saxons. In Parliament Dr Arthur urged his colleagues to allow the Maltese into the northern areas of Australia where they would engage their skills in sugar growing or coffee planting, or indeed, in developing a fishing industry which was practically non-existent in those parts. A number of Maltese agreed with Dr Arthur when he suggested that of all the lands of the Empire, Australia was the one best suited for them. Local Imperial propagandists spread the merits of that vast land, though one may be forgiven for being somewhat cynical about the lavish praise heaped on that southern continent by over-enthusiastic admirers. These claimed that the death rate in Australia was the lowest throughout the world and that practically every inhabitant of the land grew rich and contented under a stable government which guaranteed law and order to everyone. There was British justice in Australia and nobody was coerced or defrauded. It was a land of plenty with cities that compared favourably with the best in Europe. Food was plentiful and cheap and the fields produced more than could be consumed. Gold, silver and all the other metals were to be found practically everywhere. Immigrants who were lucky to reach Australia never went back to their native lands because a person who became Australian remained Australian forever. Moreover Australia was the land of the working man where employment and steady wages were ensured. Such expectations were fortified by an interview given by the Hon. W.L. Baillieu, a minister in the Victorian Cabinet which was printed by some Maltese papers on August 27th 1912. In that interview Mr Baillieu described Australia as an extraordinary country, extremely prosperous, which had come out of the pioneering stage and was now entering its own industrial revolution. Mr Baillieu claimed that Australia was now admitting some 100,000 immigrants every year. New roads were being constructed, more rail-roads laid down and arid areas were being made into fertile regions by an extensive system of irrigation. The Minister predicted that the flow of immigrants would reach the volume of a quarter of a million people a year. What Maltese propagandists did not specify was that such a glowing account of Australia was meant for British ears, not for the Maltese. When Mr Baillieu mentioned the thousands he was hoping for he had in mind prospective migrants from the British Isles. Australians were against any substantial inflow of foreigners and anybody who was not British was foreign. Even the Irish were not especially wanted. When Dr Richard Arthur intervened on behalf of Maltese immigrants he made it clear that if the Maltese were ever to be admitted in great numbers they had to keep out of the areas already populated by Anglo-Saxons and settle in the inhospitable regions to the North. The first White settlers in Australia were themselves of a very humble origin and few of them found themselves in that part of the world because they wanted to go there. But in spite of the social stigma attached to convicts who were not wanted in Great Britain, these first arrivals were British and Irish and consequently Australia was one of the most homogenous possessions of the Empire. The Maltese came from one of the most Southern outposts of Europe having as their immediate neighbours the Sicilians to the north and the Arabs to the South. At best they were thought of as Italians; because of their Semitic tongue very often they were taken for Arabs. Their Roman Catholic faith did not make their acceptance in Australia any easier. How could the Maltese hope to breach the wall of Australian prejudice? Imperialist supporters of the pro-British section among the Maltese populace thought hard about a formula that would hopefully ignore racial and religious differences and thus make the Maltese practically British. One such apologia was suggested by a local spokesman who advanced a not very logical theory which he thought would convince the Australians that Maltese immigrants did not pose a serious threat to their proud nation which categorically defined itself as White, British and Protestant. The Maltese Imperialist argument was put to the public on August 28th 1912. It said: "It is much in our favour to be able to say that we are the only White British-subject race who could properly colonise Northern Australia, satisfying our own reasonable expectations and satisfying the just expectations of Australians who refuse to have anything to do with coloured peoples". This somewhat ingenious theory made clear the Imperialist claim for acceptance: Maltese are not Asiatics and they are loyal to the Crown; they would not offer any competition to British settlers in Australia because they will confine themselves to the North of the country where no British settlers wanted to go. The theory was contradictory in itself. If the Maltese were White how did they hope to settle in regions where it was believed no Europeans could survive? The contradiction became even more apparent when those who upheld the theory tried to answer the objection referred to by explaining that the Maltese could tame the Australian north because they were "semi-tropical" and they rejoiced in the sun. The Imperial connection however, did offer the Maltese some advantages. Besides Dr Richard Arthur, there were two influential politicians who knew Malta and the Maltese very well and they occupied key positions in the Australian political arena. The two gentlemen were Sir Harry Barron and Sir Gera\lid Strickland. Sir Harry Barron had been well liked in Malta where he had spent some years as acting-governor. It was during those years, in 1907, that Sir Harry Barron created the Malta Emigration Committee, which in spite of its obvious limitations was the only body capable of fostering interest in emigration by providing information on receiving countries. Sir Harry was appointed governor of Tasmania and in 1912 he succeeded Sir Gerald Strickland as governor of Western Australia. Gerald Strickland was born in Malta in 1861. His mother was Louisa Bonici Bologna, a member of the Maltese nobility. His father was Captain Walter Strickland who himself was an aristocrat descended from an old family of Westmoreland, England. Gerald Strickland had been involved in local Maltese politics for many years and he naturally championed the Imperial cause in Malta by insisting that English should replace Italian in Malta. In opposing the official status of Italian in Malta he also indirectly helped the cause of the Maltese language which eventually was to triumph over both Italian and English. Naturally Gerald Strickland was one who felt that if the Maltese were to emigrate at all they were to go to British lands. In 1911 Sir Gerald was appointed governor of Western Australia where the town of Geraidton was named after him. Two years later he succeeded Lord ].F. Chelmsford as governor of New South Wales. A Maltese immigrant in Sydney, Salvatore Xerri, wrote in1913 that soon after he had disembarked he went to hear mass in St Mary's church, where to his delight, he saw Sir Gerald. Xerri was told that Sir Gerald had contributed £700 towards the completion of the new church. Both Barron and Strickland worked hard to dispel some of the popular misconceptions the Australians had against the Maltese. The two men insisted that the Maltese were loyal to the Empire and possessed a Christian and European culture; that they were known for their adaptability and hard work, for their sobriety and their dedication to their families. When the Catholic bishop of Perth, Mgr. Patrick Joseph Clune, visited Malta in 1913 accompanied by the Australian member of parliament, the Hon. C.B. Connolly, the prelate spoke very highly of both Barron and Strickland whom he knew personally, and he publicly stated that the two gentlemen never lost an opportunity to cultivate Australian public opinion in favour of Maltese immigrants. The bishop of Perth and Mr C.P. Connolly had been invited to Malta as representatives of Australian Catholics during the International Eucharistic Congress which was held during April and May 1913. The Emigration Committee, which had been created in 1907 through the initiative of Sir Harry Barron, contacted the two prominent Australians to give a public lecture in Valletta about immigration in Australia. Mr G.P. Connolly was not only a member of parliament, but until recently, he was also Colonial secretary in the legislative assembly of Western Australia. Bishop Clune said that he had been interested in Maltese emigration to Australia for the last twelve rrionths. He suggested that small organised groups should be sent to Western Australia. He also said that those men who had little or no capital with them should at first proceed on their own and later their wives and children could join them. Mgr. Clune said that Western Australia needed farm hands and skilled workers who would be quickly absorbed by the expanding industry. Only those who expected clerical jobs were to be dissuaded from entering Australia. Mr Connolly mentioned the one million square miles of virgin land which was waiting to be developed by immigrants. He also assured his listeners that Maltese in Western Australia would encounter no difficulty with the weather because that was very similar to the type of weather he was experiencing during his stay in Malta. Mr Connolly urged the Maltese to consider the opportunities which Australia offered them. He said: "] know all the details regarding the Immigration Regulations as 1 was the Minister controlling that department. The scanty population is out of all proportion to the immense area of the country. We need people in thousands to settle down not only in Western Australia but throughout the whole of the Commonwealth of Australia". The distinguished speaker did refer to prejudices that the Australian working man harboured against fellow labourers who were not distinctly British. He suggested that Maltese should travel to Australia in small numbers so that their presence would not be noticeable. He also mentioned the fact that Maltese did not speak English and this handicap would immediately mark them as "dagos". Mr Connolly insisted that the Maltese authorities should be very selective when they decide who should be chosen to emigrate to Australia because his country expected physically fit workers capable at their trade and able to communicate with other workers. Such emigrants would undoubtedly give a favourable impression of themselves and of their country. Maltese settlers in Western Australia would be given the support of the Catholic hierarchy which would also provide land for them to begin a small colony. Mr Connolly said that at present there were some one hundred Maltese in his State and he assured his hearers that they were all doing well. As a matter of fact a number of well educated Maltese had been in Perth since the beginning of the century. The presence of Lord Strickland had encouraged some young graduates to emigrate to Western Australia, although they were disappointed to find thi local educational authorities did not recognise their Maltese degrees. A certain CharlE Bonavia, land surveyor and architect, was helped by bishop Clune to find a lucrative jo with a salary that amounted to £20 a month. Then Mr Bonavia introduced a number of Maltese workers to the bishop who immediately obtained for them from the State government the sum of £100 to pay for their lodgings. Later these men all found good jobs, some of them earning as much as fourteen shillings a day. The bishop of Perth had helped these Maltese before his visit to Malta in the spring of 1913. He had taken a liking to the Maltese whom he considered as reliable and religious and whose large and compact families would be a numerical stimulus to the Catholic population of his diocese. During his short stay in Malta, the bishop went looking for Maltese priests who would accompany emigrants to Australia and minister to them in their settlements. The shrewd bishop knew that priests from Malta would give security and stability to any future Maltese colony. They would not only act as ministers of religion but they would also act as interpreters for their fellow countrymen and they would also prevent the Maltese "from associating with the worst class of people that continually arrive from Continental towns, who have no idea of religion or morality and are imbued with the spirit of anarchy and are haters of all Christianity". Mgr. Clune urged the Emigration Committee to send Maltese to his part of Australia: "Send them, 1 myself will give them land where young men can build a home, bring their wives and settle down successfully and happily and be kept from contact with the scum of Continental towns such as Naples and Barcelona. 1 might tell you that one of the motives which impelled me to come to Malta was to make arrangements for a scheme of Maltese emigration to Western Australia. Now that 1 have seen you, that 1 have made acquaintance with the people of Malta and learnt to admire them and love them, 1 am all the more strengthened in my determination. This is a splendid opportunity; don't let it slip". One Maltese priest, the Rev. Raphael Pace, did decide to accompany Clune and Connolly to Perth. He was a highly cultured man who had obtained a double doctorate in Romein both philosophy and theology; a his stay in Perth was to be very successful too. He worked for some forty years in the area of Perth visiting Catholics and looking after the small Maltese community. He was a good speaker who delivered his sermons in a quiet tone with an engaging foreign accent. He was also one of the first priests in the Perth metropolitan area to own a little motor car. He became very popular with Australians, Maltese and other ethnic groups with whom he freely mixed because of his friendly disposition and his ability at speaking fluently Maltese, English and Italian. Because Raphael was not a familiar name to Australians he was universally called "Don". An old friend of his wrote to say that he had happy memories of Don, looking so neat and cool in his summer suit and sun helmet. He also had the honour of receiving into the Church Sir Lancelot Goody who was later chosen as archbishop of Perth. Encouraging statements of good will were not lacking. Mr Connolly also promised that he would use his contacts with shipping agents in London to see if it were possible to grant assisted passages to Maltese emigrants. Had such a promise materialised emigration to Australia would have taken a very decisive turn. Unfortunately time was not yet ripe for such a scheme. The passage from Valletta to a European port and thence to Freemantle would cost anything from £12 to £16. As had happened so often before, the expense involved in reaching Australia was again to prove an insurmountable financial barrier to many intending migrants. Both Clune and Connolly had insisted that Malta should send either skilled workers or farmers; unfortunately the bulk of those who wished to emigrate in those days were neither skilled nor were they farmers in the Australian sense of the term. They were mostly illiterate unemployed men without any special skills and they tended to gravitate towards the city centres. Barron, Strickland, Clune and Connolly wanted to direct Maltese emigration to the undeveloped areas of Australia. The eyes of the Maltese however were set on the factories, building sites, shipyards and quays of Sydney and Melbourne. Some thirty years later, at the end of the Second World War, Maltese would settle in their thousands in all the major cities of Australia and they would prove themselves to be highly adaptable and successful. But the call of the Australian outback was not for the Maltese. Maltese immigration into New South Wales was officially discouraged. Powerful trade unionists harped on the fear of being swamped by cheap labour due to hungry foreign exiles. Maltese leaders knew very well that Australia was notorious for its opposition to the entry of foreigners. In spite of all the arguments conjured up by the Imperialist party in Malta about the British qualities of the Maltese the Australians discarded such claims because the Maltese were not "distinctly British". Sydney people looked disdainfully on these foreigners from an unfamiliar Mediterranean island colony who spoke an impossible language, went about in groups with one of them trying to make himself intelligible, while others walked about without any shoes. A Maltese correspondent in Melbourne wrote to the editor of The Daily Malta Chronicle on August 20th 1912: "The Australians have a very poor even bad opinion of us Maltese on account of the few scores of country people from Dingli, Mosta and Zejtun, who are ignorant people and go about barefooted, so much so that the Australians are classing the Maltese with coloured people. This can be read in the papers and no Australian or Englishman will work with them. We are beginning to feel ashamed of ourselves on this account. In Sydney the Maltese are utterly cold-shouldered and soon it will be the same in Tasmania. A few days ago 1 read that the Unions held a meeting 'in camera' not to allow the Maltese join the Union. This means that if any Maltese be employed where the majority belong to a union, a strike will be effected and the employer will surely be compelled to discharge the nonunion Maltese. I do not say that the fault lies with our men; they are neither murderers nor thieves. The only fault is that they cannot speak English and are ignorant people. They go about in herds of thirty or forty people, with someone who can speak for them." Up in Queensland coloured indentured labour on the sugar plantations had been provided by the Kanakas of the Solomon Islands, but since 1903 all Kanakas had been sent back to their islands because the unions had objected to the importation of cheap labour and public opinion was hostile to their presence. Maltese immigrants in Queensland had been working on the sugar plantations at least since 1881. They must have faced tremendous problems due to Australian opposition to such workers who were considered as cheap labour from the lands of Southern Europe, who had had no previous experience of cane cutting and who spoke no English. However the Maltese possessed good physical stamina and a dogged determination to work and earn money. This determination helped them to overcome Australian suspicion and they continued to make their arduous way to various centres of Queensland, particularly to Mackay and Townsville. Some accepted piece-work and made good money because of the amount of cane they cut. Others preferred to work day by day in order to receive a fixed wage. The former were sometimes the victims of corrupt contractors who pretended that the cane cut was of a poor quality so as to deprive the Maltese of their extra money. The immigrants had little chance to stand up for their rights especially when they did not even communicate with their masters because of the language handicap. In spite of almost unsurmountable difficulties Queensland became one of the oldest and most successful places of Maltese settlement in Australia. A considerable number of the immigrants, many of whom hailed from Gozo, stayed there permanently and amassed considerable wealth. Union leaders eyed the Maltese suspiciously because they feared that the State government intended to import cheap Maltese labour and thus substitute the Kanakas with the Maltese. Such suspicions were not wholly to be found on the Australian side either. An ltalianate newspaper published in Malta accused the Australian government of harbouring secret plans to rid the country of the last remaining Blacks. This was the Gazzetta di Malta of September 16th, 1913. That paper thought that those, who like Strickland, were encouraging Maltese emigration to Australia, did so not out of love for the Maltese but because they needed soldiers to defend the Southern Continent from the Asians. In 1913 some 400 Maltese labourers were taken to the Northern Territory in order to work in extending the railway system from Pine Creek to Katherine River. It had long been thought that if Australia was definitely to exclude non-Europeans from settling in the inhospitable Northern regions, then perhaps the Maltese would be successful at colonisation in that part of the Continent. The Maltese labourers were soon given their jobs and they were promised free land on the banks of the two rivers if they agreed to stay there permanently and bring their families from Malta. The workers from Malta had performed their jobs conscientiously and they earned the admiration of the engineer in charge, a certain Mr Davies who told a Maltese inquirer, Mr E. Castaldi, that he had never before had such good and disciplined workers. Mr Castaldi himself had been an ardent advocate of Maltese emigration to Australia. He had studied law in Malta but decided to seek his future in Australia. He emigrated to the Northern Territory in 1912. Later he moved to Sydney and up to 1955 he was a successful businessman there. Working in the Northern Territory was one thing but settling permanently in the tropical heat was another. As soon as their contract expired all the Maltese left the area. Only two remained in Darwin and the rest drifted towards Sydney and Melbourne. Sydney and Melbourne were not terribly enthusiastic about the coming of the Maltese. In July 1912 an incident in Sydney was widely publicised both in Australia and in Malta when Australian workers refused to work with immigrants from Malta. Some fifty Maltese had landed in Sydney after having paid their passage to Australia and as soon as they arrived they made their way to the immigration Depot to ask for work without putting any preconditions as to their terms of contract. Work was found for them but the Australian workers refused to have them because they believed that the Maltese undercut their wages, because they spoke no English, because they had no money and because their appearance was distinctly foreign. The Australian newspaper "The Worker" labelled the bewildered Maltese as "undesirable immigrants" and announced loudly that these foreigners were cold-shouldered in Sydney. The strident unions clamoured for their deportation because such aliens were an unwanted charge on the State as long as they were being kept at Bannerong Farm. The incident took on national proportions when the premier of New South Wales joined the anti-Maltese chorus, informing the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth that he considered it undesirable to encourage immigration of Maltese into New South Wales as workers there showed a marked dislike towards them. Australians had for long prided themselves that theirs was a working man's country. At the time of the Sydney incident the Commonwealth was being governed by the Labour Party and the power of the trade unions was very extensive. Any politician with 'Some ambition did not dare oppose or annoy the unions. While economists advised immigration so that the national economy would bloom, the unions opposed it because they feared competition from foreigners. Besides the unions there were other groups inspired either by religious bigotry or racial prejudice who were opposed to the entry of Maltese into Australia because they feared that this would imperil the British and Protestant character of the land. later, in 1912, the Australian Premier, Mr Fisher, came out officially against granting any assistance to Maltese immigrants even. if these were directed not to the hospitable parts of the South but to the Northern Territory. Trade union spokesmen did not favour the idea of Maltese membership. When asked about the future of Maltese immigration into Australia, a spokesman for the government, Mr Thomas, said: "Personally, 1 prefer that our money and energy be devoted to British immigrants. We have enough difficulties in the Northern territories and we must make an effort to get people there who speak our tongue. 1 do not say that 1 am not looking forward to the time when other European nations will be sending men and women to the Territory, but 1 can't but feel that to begin with it will be wise on our part to make special efforts to get those of British stock, because not only do they come from our countries, but they speak our own language". Other sad incidents mar the history of Maltese immigration into Australia during the first quarter of the twentieth century. In 1916 Malta and Australia were helping Britain to win the war against Germany. The Australian government tried to introduce conscription, but the main force of opposition to conscription came from the ranks of the unions. Military service was never popular in any place in the world, but in Australia it was being rumoured that as soon as young Australians were shipped to foreign front, the politicians would open the gates of the country to allow immigrants to replace the soldiers and sailors. Against such a background filled with hostile suspicions a number of Maltese continued to reach the shores of Australia. Some managed to slip in without attracting attention but others became the victims of unfriendly statements and base machinations which hurt the Maltese and disgraced those who made them. The mailboat "Arabia" arrived at Freemantle in 1916, having on board some ninetyseven passengers from Malta who had been originally hired to work on the wharves and on railway projects. It seems that this batch of Maltese did not meet much opposition but it was rumoured around that they were only the advance party of a much larger group. As a matter of fact another group of some 240 Maltese did later on approach the port of Freemantle on board the French steamer "Gange". This time the Maltese party got all the publicity it did not need. Donald Cameron of the Freemantle Lumpers' Union was also a journalist and he soon splashed the sensation that shiploads of Maltese were being imported into Australia to take the place of Australians who had gone to war. Although Government censors tried to hush the news Cameron was not troubled at all; he typed copies of the censors' note which he duly distributed throughout the land. In 1939 the Hon. Donald Cameron was sitting in Parliament as Senator and he was still very proud of his patriotic effort in telling the nation about the imminent invasion of the nation by these Maltese foreigners. In the Parliamentary Debates of the Senate of May 17th, 1939, Cameron is reported to have declared: "I believe that in this way 1 was originally responsible for the dissemination of that information about the introduction of the Maltese to the Commonwealth". Cameron's action was supported by the Premier of New South Wales, Mr John Gunn, who accused the Commonwealth Government of using conscription to hide the plans of allowing in foreigners from Malta on a large scale. Mr Gunn told the French Consul in Sydney to order the "Cange" not to approach Sydney. The ship was put in quarantine to keep her out of public glare and the captain was told to give his destination as Noumea, the capital city of the French island of New Caledonia. The Maltese on the "Gange" were taken to that island where they were forced to stay for six months. After six months they were taken back to Sydney but they were not allowed to land; instead they were detained on an old abandoned ship anchored in the harbour. It was only when the Sydney authorities guaranteed employment for the Maltese that they were at last allowed to touch Australian soil. Australia had made it abundantly clear that its shores were closed to non-British. In spite of the pleading of Maltese Imperialists and their loyalty to the Empire, the Maltese were not to be considered as British but as foreign. As one newspaper editor put it: "We are not appreciated in the territories that spread out under the Southern Cross because wrong impressions have got into the minds of men in those parts of the earth with regard to us. Emigrants from Malta have gone to a land which is morbidly sensitive of its English traditions". Australia's indifference towards Maltese immigrants remained unchanged until after the Second World War when Malta's harsh ordeal under the bombs of the Nazis and the staunch courage of the Maltese when they suffered tremendous hardship for the cause of the Empire, earned them not only the George Cross but also the admiration of most Australians.
    
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