About OzMalta

OzMalta

Overview

OzMalta is the website of the Maltese e-Newsletter, a bilingual English and Maltese journal published from Adelaide, South Australia, for the Maltese diaspora. The journal styles itself "A Journal for the Maltese Diaspora" — its issues have also carried the line "The Journal of the Maltese Diaspora" — and its website describes itself as the "Website of the Maltese Diaspora", under the tagline "Building Bridges between Communities". It is edited by Frank L Scicluna OAM, an Adelaide-based Maltese community figure, and is distributed as a numbered PDF journal by email and through the OzMalta website.

The publication is unmistakably current. Its issue No. 582 is dated December 2025 and its issue No. 597 is dated May 2026, and the full run of recent issues is posted on the journal's own site. The numbering alone indicates a publication that appears several times a month: between the March 2025 issue (No. 554) and the May 2026 issue (No. 597), the sequence advanced by more than forty numbers in about fourteen months. Each issue mixes news from Malta itself, news and profiles from Maltese communities in Australia and around the world, community notices, history features and Maltese-language literary contributions.

OzMalta is not a commercial news site and does not present itself as one. It is a community journal in the tradition of the ethnic-community newsletter: compiled by its editor from official releases, community correspondence, contributed articles and historical material, and sustained by the editor's own standing in the Maltese-Australian community rather than by a newsroom.

History

The journal began as the newsletter of the Consulate of Malta in South Australia. Its early mastheads, from 2014, are headed "Consulate of Malta in South Australia Newsletter" and carry the name of Frank L Scicluna with the subtitle "The Journal of the Maltese Diaspora" and the tagline "Linking Malta and Australia". The earliest issue sighted in the journal's online archive is No. 47, dated June 2014, followed by No. 49 in July 2014, No. 55 in September 2014 and No. 58 on 15 October 2014; the OzMalta website itself carries a 2014 copyright line in Scicluna's name. No formal launch announcement for issue No. 1 is published in the sources consulted, so the journal's exact first-issue date is not asserted here; what the archive establishes is a numbered sequence already well advanced by mid-2014 and continuing without interruption into 2026.

Frank Scicluna is the journal's founder and editor — its own 500th-issue editorial, published in December 2023, calls the journal his "brainchild" and describes it as having been "the glue holding Maltese living outside Malta together for many years". Scicluna's background, as recorded in community and biographical sources, is in education and community service: he spent 35 years with the South Australian Department for Education, served as President of the Maltese Community Council of South Australia for nine years, was President of the Ethnic Schools Association and Chair of the Australian Federation of Ethnic Schools Associations, was appointed a Justice of the Peace in South Australia in 1991, and was appointed by the Prime Minister of Malta in 2012 as a delegate to the Council for Maltese Living Abroad. He also served as Honorary Consul for Malta in South Australia — the role under which the newsletter began — and is the author of the book Malta and the Anzacs: The Nurse of the Mediterranean, about Malta's role in the First World War, which is featured at length on the OzMalta site.

Milestones in the journal's own numbering mark its progress: issue No. 100 was published as a special edition in November 2015; the 500th issue appeared in December 2023, with No. 501 following in the same month; and in March 2025 the journal reported, in its issue No. 554, that Scicluna had received a Governor of South Australia Multicultural Award at a ceremony at Government House, Adelaide, on 5 March 2025, presented by the Governor of South Australia, Frances Adamson. Publication continued through 2025 (No. 582, December 2025) and into 2026 (No. 597, May 2026).

Content and Coverage

The journal's content is built around the twin poles of its editor's tagline: Malta, and the Maltese living abroad. News from Malta occupies a large share of each issue — politics and public affairs, including, in the May 2026 issue, an editorial feature on the long-running campaign for Maltese citizens abroad to be able to vote without travelling to Malta, and coverage of Malta's signing of the Artemis Accords, drawn from a United States Department of State release of 4 May 2026. The same issue marked 22 years of Malta's membership of the European Union and carried profiles of newly named delegates of the Council for Maltese Living Abroad from Brazil and the United States.

Diaspora and community material is the journal's other main strand. Its December 2025 issue led with a historical feature on Dr Charles Baldacchino of Adelaide, the first Maltese doctor to graduate in Australia, whose parents were among the earliest Maltese settlers in South Australia. Earlier issues carried extensive Adelaide community coverage, including the St Catherine Society's work to keep Maltese culture alive in Adelaide, the visit of the President of Malta to South Australia in 2016, and consular and community notices for South Australia's Maltese community.

History is a recurring feature rather than an occasional one. The journal has published long historical features on the Maltese Cross and the Knights of St John, on the discrimination faced by Maltese migrants in South Australia in the 1920s, and on the 1916 episode known as "the Children of Billy Hughes", in which a shipload of Maltese migrants was refused entry to Australia. Malta's First World War role as the "Nurse of the Mediterranean" — the subject of Scicluna's own book — is a standing theme on the OzMalta website, and the journal regularly carries philatelic and cultural items, reader letters, charity appeals such as that of Doninu (Malta) International, and Maltese-language contributions including poetry, such as the work of Kav (Cavalier) Joe M Attard published in the May 2026 issue.

Audience and Reach

The journal is addressed, by its own description, to the Maltese diaspora: Maltese people living outside Malta, and their descendants, rather than to readers in Malta alone. Within Australia its centre of gravity is Adelaide and South Australia, where its editor is based and where much of its community coverage originates; but its contents reach well beyond one city — the May 2026 issue alone carried contributions and profiles concerning Maltese communities in the United States and Brazil, statements from Malta's embassy in the United States, and material from Malta itself, reflecting the journal's circulation by email to readers in the countries of the Maltese diaspora.

OzMalta publishes no audited circulation or independently verified readership figures, and none are claimed for it here. Its own 500th-issue editorial described the journal as popular among Maltese scattered around the world — that is the publication's characterisation of itself, presented here in those terms — and community organisations such as the Maltese Community Council of Victoria have redistributed its issues, for example hosting the March 2025 issue on their own website, which indicates a readership extending across state community networks. The journal is free to read, with issues posted in full on its website.

Digital Presence

The journal's home is ozmalta.com, a WordPress site headed "Website of the Maltese Diaspora – Building Bridges between Communities", where the run of issues is posted as PDF files — the December 2023, March 2025, December 2025 and May 2026 issues were all sighted directly on the domain during the research for this profile — alongside feature material including extended coverage of Scicluna's Malta and the Anzacs book. Earlier issues were also published through the address ozmalta.page4.me, which the journal's mastheads gave as the place to read the newsletters, and the site carries the credit "Webmaster: Frank L Scicluna – Adelaide, Australia". Distribution is by email to subscribers as well as through the website, and individual issues are forwarded and re-hosted by Maltese community bodies, as the Victorian council's hosting of the March 2025 issue shows.

A note on verification: unlike some community sites in this directory, ozmalta.com could be fetched and read directly in October 2026, and the current state of the journal described here — most recently the May 2026 issue, No. 597 — rests on the journal's own published files rather than on third-party summaries.

Ownership and Organisation

OzMalta and its journal are the work of Frank L Scicluna, who founded the newsletter during his period as Honorary Consul for Malta in South Australia, when it appeared as the consulate's newsletter, and who continues as its editor. There is no parent company, publishing group or commercial newsroom behind it: the operation is an independent, editor-led community publication, compiled by Scicluna from official releases, community contributions and his own writing, and issued under his name from Adelaide. No advertising model, subscription charge or staff structure is documented in the sources consulted, and none is asserted here. The journal's longevity — a numbered run passing 500 issues in December 2023 and reaching No. 597 by May 2026 — rests on that one-editor model and on the editor's long-standing roles in Maltese community organisations in South Australia and in the Council for Maltese Living Abroad network.

Contact and Availability

The journal is published from Adelaide, South Australia, and is available free of charge: current and back issues can be read on its website, ozmalta.com. The contact email published on the OzMalta website and in the journal's mastheads is honconsul@live.com.au. No street address for the publication is published in the sources consulted, and none is given here; the public business email field for this listing is intentionally left empty, with the published address recorded in this text only.