Four families of Gozitan descent are planning to relocate to Gozo after evacuating their houses in the northern part of Brisbane when the city was flooded.
Raymond C. Xerri, president of the Gozo branch of the Friends of Australia Association, said the families consisted of about 16 people. They have been put up in a local gymnasium on the outskirts of Brisbane accompanied by Italian and Greek friends.
Arrangements for their relocation are still at a preliminary stage. They lost all their possessions, he said, and were now in the process of selling their land. No further details were available about the families yesterday.
The government of the state of Queensland is providing support to the flood victims.
Mgr Philip Calleja, who heads the Church’s Emigrants Commission, said there had been no reports of any Maltese missing in the floods, which have devastated vast swathes of land.
Studies conducted in 2002 by Dr Xerri for his Victoria University PhD showed that in Queensland, dubbed the “sunshine” state, there were about 7,500 Maltese and Gozitan people of first, second and third generations.
One of them is Carmen Formosa, 74, a grandmother of three who lives in the Gold Coast. “I’ve never seen this amount of water,” she admitted on the telephone yesterday.
Ms Formosa moved there from Sydney 24 years ago. Situated about one and a half hours away from Brisbane, she said the Gold Coast was home to about 2,000 Maltese migrants.
Although they have not been told to evacuate their houses, Gold Coast residents have been warned of heavy rainfall and a possible thunderstorm in the coming week.
SBS radio correspondent Sandra Micallef, who lives 14 kilometres north of Brisbane, said although her house had not been affected by the flooding, she was stuck at home because the University of Queensland, where she works, would be closed until the end of next week.
The area is under two metres of water and, on Tuesday, employees were sent back home.
Ms Micallef said, contrary to those in Sydney and Melbourne, the Maltese migrants in Queensland were spread out.
Talking about the floods, she said 15 people had been found dead, 50 were missing and 4,000 had been evacuated. Electricity to most of Brisbane had been cut off and the region was closed to traffic.
She said a crocodile had been spotted in Rockhampton, which flooded late last week, and a bull shark was seen in the suburb Goodna. “We’re taking it day by day, especially now that we’ve been warned that a cyclone is on its way,” Ms Micallef said.
Margaret Grima, president of the Maltese-Australian Gold Coast Association, was more optimistic, after managing to dry out all her clothes when yesterday she took advantage of streaks of sunlight peeking out from behind heavy clouds.
“Brisbane, however, is still closed and a lot of companies have shut down.
“We’ve just been informed that, hopefully, everything will come back to normal when the water starts clearing out on Saturday. “This is a huge tragedy,” Ms Grima sighed.
All 180 members of the association have been accounted for, she said.