The Maltese in Sydney
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Abstract
Emigration has long acted as a safety valve for the overpopulated island-fortress of Malta. Consequently, the Maltese diaspora has expanded to lands far beyond the island’s Mediterranean shores.
Before Malta became an industrialised, economically viable and independent nation in the mid- 1960s, it could not sustain its high level of population, due to limited land space, a high birth rate and no natural resources. Its main assets were its people – their skills, ingenuity, willingness to work hard, and thriftiness – qualities which emigrants quickly put to good use on arrival in Australia and elsewhere.
Today, many believe that Australians of Maltese birth and descent exceed the number of Maltese in the Maltese Islands themselves. The 2006 census for Maltese by ancestry in NSW stood at 61,528, of whom 49,169, or 80 per cent, reside in metropolitan Sydney. Today, among the top 30 languages spoken in NSW, Maltese ranks as the 16th. Second- and third-generation Australian Maltese are three times as numerous as the Malta-born population.
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