Henry Frendo writes:

Albert W. Agius, better known as ‘Bertie’, who passed away on March 10 in Malta, was quite a character and a not-able achiever. Born in Biżebbuġa, in 1933, in his younger days he distinguished himself as a sportsman, playing for various football clubs and effectively introducing hockey to Malta.

From 1950 to 1978 he worked for Cable and Wireless and followed a course in journalism at the University of Malta shortly before this was taken over and nationalised by Dom Mintoff, when partial industrial actions started being severely prohibited and punished.

In November 1978, he emigrated to Australia, which is where I first met him. Like various others I had left Malta (for Geneva) in the same month of the same year.  

For several years Bertie was Australia correspondent for Times of Malta, his ‘Australia Newsletter’ serving as a bridge between the two countries and communities.

He put his journalistic qualities to good use also writing two books about Maltese settlement there, as well as a first thesaurus on the Maltese language. 

A sensitive, civic-minded and friendly soul with a concern for human rights, he had publicly and boldly expressed his disgust at a letter in The Maltese Herald by one John Farrugia in Sydney, secretary of the Għaqda Soċjalista Maltija, who trivialised and made fun of an instance ofpolice torture against a handicapped person.

In this case, to which I had referred in my lead article ‘Messages from Mintoff’s Malta’ (Quadrant, Dec. 1986, p.30), a suspect’s head had been forced down a filthy toilet-bowl and then operating the flushing.

I had been hoping to see Bertie at the launch of my forthcoming book from Midsea on Maltese overseas settlement, Diaspora, but it was not to be.

To his dear wife Phyllis, his three sons and all the family, my very sincere condolences.