Years after moving to Australia and building a life on the other side of the world, Maltese emigrants who travelled there alone as teenagers still recall the struggles they had to endure despite not even having turned 18.

Speaking to this newspaper while on their annual summer holiday in Malta, Alfred Farrugia and Connie Catania recalled how they left the island at the ages of 14 and 17, moving to Australia while their families remained here.

Mr Farrugia moved to a group residence for children in Bindoon, Western Australia at the age of 14, spending the first 18 months alone with other boys his age. His family stayed in Malta, relocating to Australia over a year later.

“We had left on one of the ships, the SS Sydney and we worked very hard. I left Malta thinking I would be going to school but that was not the case and we started working soon after we arrived in Australia,” Mr Farrugia recalled, adding that he worked as a labourer and did not get paid but was instead given food and accommodation.

While he could handle the arduous jobs assigned to him, Mr Farrugia admitted that it was being away from his family that was hardest, especially since as a young boy he had never been away from them for long stretches of time.

I was very homesick in the beginning

“I was very homesick in the beginning, especially in the first three to four months. I would write to my family regularly but still, at 14, it was tough,” Mr Farrugia said. During those first few months he was living with a group of some 30 Maltese boys, the youngest being eight years old.

When his family did relocate, Mr Farrugia said, he soon adapted to life there. He got married to his Maltese wife in Australia and built a family there.

For Ms Catania, the move was less difficult as she was 17, spoke English fluently and had travelled with her older sister.

Connie Catania wrote to her parents in Malta every day.

The two sisters moved to Australia in 1964 as part of the Single Young Women Migrants Scheme – a scheme sponsored by the Emigrants Commission that would first train the young women in Malta before they moved away.

The sisters had decided to move to Australia as it was getting increasingly difficult for their family of nine to find adequate housing.

“I remember everything seemed so much bigger than it was.

“There were a lot of things we had never done before, like getting on a train for instance and at 17, that was a big deal,” Ms Catania said.

While she admits to having felt homesick during the first few months there, having her sister with her helped and within a few weeks, the pair managed to find jobs and even moved into their own flat.

“I would write to my parents every day but I knew they would be coming over soon and that would keep me going. In fact, they came after some six months and we moved into a house all together,” she said.

Both Mr Farrugia and Ms Catania return to Malta as often as possible and while they have both lived in Australia since moving there in the 1960s, they admit they still think of Malta as their home and speak to their spouses in Maltese, in an attempt to hold on to their heritage.