Maltese Road Trip

"I took a wrong turn off of an unmarked track
I did seven miles I couldn't find my way back
Hit a lonely stretch, must be losing my touch
I was out of my depth
Land was so flat, could well have been ocean
No distinguishing feature in any direction..."
- Lonely Stretch, The Triffids (originally from Perth, Australia)

From the north west corner of Malta to Birzebbuġa in the south east corner is a whole 39 kilometres by road. How could it be possible then, that we find ourselves even slightly lost? It is merely two kilometers from Rabat to Dingli and yet Dingli is not appearing. This is not lost in the Australian sense. Are we tilting at windmills?

Yet my maps could not make sense of these rough Dingli back roads. Tracks would split in two and it was guesswork as to which was the main road. Signs were not a luxury provided, and each track wound around enough to destroy many a seemingly good decision. I could navigate my way out of a paper bag and I was frankly embarrassed by my Dingli area navigational failure.

We eventually managed to surface in Dingli an hour or so later. The city felt like a ghost town, with practically nothing open and very few people on the street. Yet our relief at finally surfacing where we had wanted to appear glanced over these strange facts about our surroundings.

For the Thursday before Good Friday, we hire a little Hyundai Getz to scale the heights and depths of Malta. Our car is provided nearly out of fuel and we are advised that we must return it empty. "You know," my father says to the friendly car hire woman, "that is technically impossible." We use the car to scale areas from Saint Pauls Bay to Mellieħa to Dingli and beyond.

Partly inspired by the music of Maltese Australian Andy Busuttil and his band Skorba, I tracked down the Skorba Temples at Mgarr and Ħaġar Qim temple. The Skorba temple dates back to the Ggantija phase (3600-3200 BC) while Ħaġar Qim the Tarxien phase (3200-2500BC). With my lack of artistic leanings, I struggle to picture the type of civilisation and their customs, traditions and religions from the era of these remains. Following the visit, I read with curiosity Brian Blouet's "The Story of Malta", but putting together the pieces from over 4000 years ago is not easy.

My father and I took a standard tourist boat ride to the Blue Grotto. I was amused by the "Passengers are obliged to wear life jackets during voyage" on the ticket, because we never saw lifejackets. The blue and purple colourings of rocks in the area of the Blue Grotto, combined with the deep blue of the Mediterranean, were worth seeing. This part of Malta was like a calmer version of areas near Albany in Western Australia, with the ocean meeting solid rock.

Small rock based retaining walls of sorts litter the Maltese 'country side'. I found out later that this was done many years ago in an attempt to bring more land into cultivation. Most appear to have been abandoned long ago, which is hardly surprising given the likely lack of fertile land and inefficient production scales. These minor walls, along with many abandoned buildings, adorn the landscape, slowly returning to dust.

The road trip was an attempt to traverse as much of Malta that we had not already seen in one day. Realistically, there is still a lot more to be discovered. We never reached Marsaxlokk or Marsaskala, not to mention the entire neglected island of Gozo. Large sections of Malta remain of curiosity and undiscovered. I am not sure if I will be entirely satisfied until I have walked every town in the country.

Ħaġar Qim