Getting around

I've been traveling away from Oz for 6 months now and this is my 50th post!  There have been reports of destructive storms in Brisbane this week, but my friends there tell me that it isn't as bad as it might be painted in the international press.  My brother in England tells me that he's just finished the apple harvest before the frost arrives and his garden is inundated with field mice, moles and squirrels.  My other brother in Scotland tells me he is resigned to another windy and cold winter on his boat.  

Here in Malta, the nights are getting cold and I have bought myself fleecy pyjamas with Minnie Mouse all over them, and a duvet so I am snug.  Today is windy but the sunny days here are still warm and the change of season has greened up the fields and natural habitats so the whole island looks fresh and lovely.  I have lampuki (local fish) bones bubbling on the stove to make fish stock and mixed beans are soaking to make minestrone soup.  All is right with my world!

The photo above is the inside of a local bus taken yesterday on my way back from Paola where I had been to find out about my local medical centre.  Most of the buses here have little shrines and sayings or jokes written up near the driver's cabin with his red ticket machine.  But I loved this one with Mary in the middle and bobbing Hollywood starlets on either side!

In my next post I'll tell the story of a ramble around Dingli cliffs but for now, I want to add a postscript to my previous post about the pressures on the Maltese landscape.  When I walked over to the meeting place for the Wied Garnaw ramble, I walked up through the valley between Marsaxlokk and Birzebbugia.  The country lanes through here have become a regular route for my morning walks and after hearing about the conflicting uses of the countryside, I decided I would try and see if there was a circular route coming back down through the valley towards Birzebbugia.  I have already discovered the walking route along the cliff between Marsaxlokk and Birzebbugia to complete the circuit.  I walked up through the valley and found what looked like a country lane going in the right direction.  The road went through a tiny hamlet and down through rubble walls towards a vast scrapyard.  A truck passed me squashing me against the rubble wall and then stopped blocking off the road so that I had to again squeeze past it.  As I came out on the other side, there were car bodies and scrap iron spilling out of the surrounding fields and onto the country lane leaving only a narrow winding path through.  Three men were working on a car body at the side of the path and as I came up I asked politely if I could go through here.  One said 'yes', another said 'No'.  So I carried on walking through the jungle of scrap metal until I came out on the main road down into Birzebbugia.

I have thought about it a lot since.  There is clearly a need for scrap metal yards in Malta but it is tragic to see scarce agricultural land used for this purpose and spilling onto the public right of way.  When I talked with some of the participants in the Wildlife and Habitats course I am doing in Mosta, I discovered that one of the women lives in Birzebbugia (she now gives me a lift home which is a godsend!) and she told me that the Birzebbugia local council were taking the scrap yard people to court but it was very difficult since it was private land.  In such a small island where everybody knows everybody else and people have been traditionally self-sufficient, it is a hard task to change an established use.  I'm not about to join the letter-writing brigade but I would like to think of some way in which I might contribute to the resolution of this issue.

My next post is about the area around Dingli village where the local council appears to be doing well in managing the varied uses of the land in the area.