Update 6.20pm
"Malta will always miss you," President Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca told a Maltese-Australian community gathered in Wollongong, New South Wales today.
Describing her official visit to Australia as "one of the most emotional" experiences she had had, the president urged those present to keep Maltese traditions, customs and culture alive Down Under.
The president was speaking at the George Cross Falcons community centre in Cringila, Wollongong. The centre was built in 1951 to serve the Maltese community that had arrived to work in the Illawarra region steel industry.
Earlier, the president visited an Australian monument that depicts the settlement history of Maltese migrants.
Pendle Hill's Bi-Centenary Monument shows the symbolic four arms of the eight-pointed Maltese cross, with a bronze plaque on each arm telling the story of those who left Malta to settle Down Under. The monument was erected in 1988 to commemorate the 200th year of colonial occupation in Australia.
The president, who is currently on an official visit to Australia, also visited the Alfred Fenech Maltese Resource Centre, in Paramatta, Sydney.
The Maltese Community Council of New South Wales runs a number of activities from the centre, such as the Maltese language school. The centre also prints Maltese newspaper The Voice of the Maltese.
A crowd gathers to greet President Coleiro-Preca at Pendle Hill.
President Coleiro-Preca thanked Maltese Community Council of New South Wales members for their continuous efforts to keep the Maltese flag flying high in Australia, and for preserving and sharing Maltese identity, including the Maltese language.
The president also visited St Dominic’s Hostel in Blacktown, Sydney, which is run by the Dominican Sisters of Malta. The president was greeted by the Mother Superior of the Dominican Sisters of Malta in NSW, Sister Georgina Sultana.
President Coleiro-Preca thanked the Sisters for their constant dedication to help those in need – a sense of dedication which could also be seen in the other hostels the Sisters have in Malta and London, she said.