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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 48| December 2000


The National Library goes to air in Malta

During October, the Library welcomed two separate groups of visitors from the Republic of Malta. The first, on 23 October, was a film crew from Malta’s Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and the second, on 30 October, was a deputation from the Malta Labour Party (MLP). The MLP visitors included the Hon. Joseph Cuschieri, a Member of the Maltese Parliament.

Mark Cranfield the Chief Oral History Officer welcomed the PBS team to the Library. The crew filmed a segment about the Library that will be screened in Malta on one of the archipelago’s most popular television programs, ‘Waltzing Matilda’. As the title denotes, the program is viewed by Maltese people who have an Australian connection—the majority of people in Malta. Producer Josephine Zammit-Cordina expressed surprise and appreciation at the extent of the Library’s work in building special collections of Maltese–Australian material over the past decade. The PBS crew was particularly impressed with two illuminated addresses from the Manuscript Collection, relating to Gerald Strickland (1861–1940), the Maltese count who served as Governor of three Australian States, Tasmania, WA and NSW, between 1904 and 1917. The ‘Waltzing Matilda’ segment will focus on the Oral History Section, where Mrs Zammit-Cordina interviewed Sound Archivist Kevin Bradley, Loreto York (my father, born in Malta in 1918) and myself. The crew was interested in my father because he was the first Maltese-born person to become the Mayor of an Australian city, having been elected Mayor of Brunswick in 1971.

Film crew from the Public Broadcasting Service of Malta (1)

Film crew from the Public Broadcasting Service of Malta.
Left to right: Loreto John York, Josephine Zammit-Cordina, Barry York, Harold Zammit-Cordina,
Joe Montebello, Alfred Flash. Photograph: Helen Minopetros

Film crew from the Public Broadcasting of Malta (2)

Left to right: Kevin Bradley, Alfred Flash, Barry York, Josephine Zammit-Cordina,
Loreto John York, Harold Zammit-Cordina. Photograph: Helen Minopetros

Charles Muscat, a member of the Canberra–Maltese community, accompanied the MLP visitors—Joseph Cuschieri MP, Emmanuel Cuschieri and Joseph Sammut. They were welcomed to the Library by Margy Burn, Assistant Director-General, Australian Collections and Reader Services. The MLP deputation was also shown the Oral History Section, particularly the studio and control rooms where samples of National Library recordings with Maltese-Australians were played. Of particular interest were recordings made in the western suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney with Maltese folk musicians known as ‘ghannejja’. As some of these musicians had migrated to Australia in the 1950s, the form of ‘ghana’ recorded by the Library is of great ethnomusicological value in Malta, as well as Australia, today.

Both visits were highly successful, representing an example of the way the National Library builds links internationally through its close connections with migrant communities in Australia. Both groups expressed a desire to keep in touch with the Library.
—Barry York

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