Home again and writing

Easter has been solitary and reflective. The mood was set on Maundy Thursday when I went to the lunchtime concert at St Catherine of Italy - beautiful songs accompanied by piano for the stations of the cross. But the readings in between each piece gave the performance meaning for me. The performers had carefully chosen poems and writing about some of the horrors that we have perpetrated on each other during the past century. In the past week, I have picked up from two different sources the proposition that Malta's history has been about service. In the past it has been the service of other people's power struggles. Malta's independent future now lies in the service of peace. It is a seductive idea for an old woman who has chosen this small central turning point of the Mediterranean as my home.

The Good Friday procession was interrupted by an island-wide power cut. The final station had just passed me in my position at the top of the hill in St Paul's street. The rhythmic creaking of the carrying poles was stopped as the penitents in their light brown robes reached the top and put down their heavy load on the resting stays. When the power went off, there was literally an electric pause as everyone tried to work out what had suddenly happened to plunge us all into darkness. I walked down along the side of the procession to head to my flat to make dinner, but when I realised the power was off I decided I couldn't face the many flights of steps with lift and lights out of action. I wandered through the Valletta streets where people had started to light candles and put on car headlamps to help the procession get moving again. At the restaurants I passed anxious workers standing in the doorways trying to get an idea of how long the cut might last. Of course, they could not cook food. I ended up in upper Valletta in the cafe at St James Cavalier. They were the only place in Valletta to have power, probably because they have their back to Castille where the PM's office is. I went in for seafood risotto washed down with half a bottle of Maltese wine and finished off with hot chocolate.

At 9.30, the power was still off but I was sufficiently fortified to face the climb up to my flat using the tiny torch on my key ring to light the way.

The rest of Easter I have spent getting back into my writing, unpacking the last of my boxes from Australia and setting up my office space with all my reference books around me. On Sunday, I also went to the Adoloratto cemetery to see if I could find the two plots where my grandparents were buried. I had been given two plot numbers by a very helpful government employee suggested by a friend (thanks, Reno) but it was quite difficult to work out where they were. The cemetery is beautiful, set on a hillside with lots of established trees and the amazing baroque tombs and chapels in the private sections. I wandered vaguely, using the sun to head in a Westerly direction which was where the government plots were located as indicated by the numbers that I was carrying scribbled on a piece of paper. After a while I realised that some of the terrace walls had letters on them and then at the back of the cemetery I noticed that the grave sites had multiple marble plaques on each and these seemed to be temporary. The plots had numbers on them and I eventually found my grandparents in the same row, but not side by side. As in most rocky lands with limited space, Malta routinely clears government graves every ten years and places the remains in a charnel. I couldn't identify the charnel house but I will return during office hours and try to find out more about what I can do to commemorate the place where my ancestors are buried.

The photo that heads the post is of an ancient apiary carved into the garigue at Xemxija that I visited with Ramblers Malta in January. The smaller holes are for the bees to store their honey. The larger hole is where the beekeeper went in to collect it. It seems that the more I write, the more I have to write. Now I have lined up for my next posts the venture in Cuba last year, my trips to UK and Liguria in Italy last month and the visit by my brother last week. Until my next post...

From my window

The twin breakwaters of Grand Harbour embrace me like the arms of a final lover.

I feel the pulse of Valletta snuggled at my back, breathing softly in my ear.

He speaks to me, this city built by gentlemen for gentlemen,

this city of straight masculine lines and defensive bastions,

this city of baroque excess.

I am the soft, rounded shapes of the goddess temples,

more ancient than the knights' city,

trampled by the knights' religion,

reborn in Valletta chapels as virgin mother and martyred saint.

Yet his soft breathing enchants me and his encircling arms merge with my own arms.

Red and green candles flicker in my hands,

guiding ships to the safe harbour that has become my own haven.

Cheesemaking and other NZ delights

I still haven't got back into blog routine. It's already over a month since my last post. When everyday life is rich and full, it is difficult to sit down and write about it. Yet the discipline of finding time to write each day is valuable for me and so I want to maintain the blog. Right now I am watching four new grey patrol boats recently arrived in Malta from Australia to join the border protection programme. They shot out of Marsamxetto in a straight line, made a large circle and now they're heading back in.

In this post I'll sketch out the start of my trip back to Malta in November last year. The photo that heads the post shows camembert taken out of the brine and standing for 24 hours before going into the cool cabinet. We made them in a cheese-making workshop run by my cousin Vicky. My red-headed cousins live on the east coast of the south island of New Zealand and I called in to see them when I found that my plane trip to Cuba stopped over in Auckland. It was easy to arrange a flight from there to Christchurch and a flight back via Wellington so I could also visit my dark-haired, slightly greying cousin, John. There are cheap internal NZ flights available online that Vicky put me on to. At first I had considered taking the train journey from Auckland down to Wellington, across on the ferry and then along the coast to Christchurch. I had enjoyed that trip once before, but discovered that it no longer ran and would have taken too long anyway.

Vicky and one of her daughters drove up from Oamarau to meet me at Christchurch. The trip takes several hours so it was a long day for them and I was very grateful not to have to worry about finding somewhere to stay in Christchurch and then catching the bus. Vicky offers her house as a B & B called the Red Shed and it's a great place to visit. All her family have thrived in the New Zealand culture where craft and bush skills are valued. There is always an atmosphere of support at Vicky's for the various creative projects and adventurous endeavours that everyone gets into. Whilst I was there we made brie and camembert, tried our hand at decoupage on large objects like tables and chairs and learnt how to make giant twig balls. I also watched Vicky's son as he put his young dog through its training for hunting and tracking. We had a potluck supper where everyone brought a dish not only cooked themselves but also grown or caught themselves. We had delicious white bait fritters made from fish caught in the local river and eggs laid by home chickens, all kinds of home-grown vegetables in salads and pies and baked, and delicious chutneys and cheeses. I was only there for two full days and I felt I had become part of a happy, creative community. I am so glad that I can use electronic media now to keep in touch with all the exciting things that continue to happen in their part of the world.

On my way back to Auckland, I stayed overnight in Wellington, that lovely city on the South coast of the North Island on the channel between the two halves of New Zealand. My cousin John and his wife welcomed me into their busy lives as academics and community figures and at the University I was helped to track down some more information about my mother's side of the family who had gone to New Zealand some generations before my mother was born in Malta.

In my next post, I'll get on to our great trip to sing at the International Choral Festival in Cuba.

Icing on the cake

This is the icing from the cake my aunt-in-law (is there such a relationship?) made for me when I visited my relatives in NSW to say farewell before I left Australia. I keep promising to get onto my journey to Malta via New Zealand and Cuba but when I sit down to start there are more things to say about leaving Australia.

My sailing boat came into my life 15 years ago. It was my birthday present to myself when I turned 50. It is a classic 22ft open cockpit yacht built in 1948 so not much younger than me. I fell in love with its beautiful lines although in many ways it is an impractical boat to sail on Moreton Bay. It has a fixed keel so it is sometimes difficult to get it out at low tide through the shifting channel in the mangrove and mud Tingalpa creek where I kept it moored. And without a cabin, it is adventurous to stay out overnight.

I sailed single-handed, learnt about the tides and worked out how to stay out overnight sleeping under the boom tent. I saw in the millennium anchored in the Broadwater at the Gold Coast to watch the fireworks. On the way back, I called into Horseshoe Bay at Peel Island and was standing in the water close to the beach as a pod of dolphins were herding fish into the shallows for their breakfast.

The sailing became more challenging as I became older and less agile, but it was breaking my wrist that pushed me to bring my boat out of the water and put it on a cradle at the front of my house. It took on a new life as a local landmark and I set up the timber mast as a flagpole for my Eureka flag. I had pangs of guilt from time to time as I watched it deteriorating. My boat pined to be back on the bay.

Last year, when I was living for half the year in Marsaxlokk, someone started making enquiries of my Australian neighbours about what was to happen with my boat. So when I returned to make arrangements for coming to live in Malta, I just had to make a few phone calls and my boat had a new home. Her new owner is manager of East Coast marina and he is now working on restoring the boat and sailing her once again on Moreton Bay. It is a huge job he has taken on because we only just caught her in time before she had deteriorated too much. But he knows what he is doing and has the skills and resources to make it happen so when I visit Australia again later this year she should be back in her element, sailing on the bay. That makes me feel good.

Here in Malta, today is the feast of St Paul shipwrecked. I went walking with Ramblers Malta from Mellieha Parish church down through the fertile valley to the bay and then back along the cliffs. We passed the hotel where Malta Environment and Planning Agency have just approved extensions that will spread out over the surrounding fields in a protected zone. The decision has pushed the Ramblers into more active protest and they are planning to challenge in the courts. The invidious creep of over-development in the North of the island is reaching a critical point from which there will be no return. I will be taking part in the protest rally to be held in Valletta on 6th March.

Unpacking my life

These are the 37 boxes that I packed up in Australia six months ago and I am now unpacking in my flat in Valletta. I tried to be ruthless with my life stories but still I have too much to fit into my flat. The books will have to stay in boxes for a while. I unpack slowly, finding a place for each memory as it comes out of the box. I group things differently from before.

Today has been sunny and warmer than the past week. Walking down Merchants street to get the paper, two people greeted me with "bonju" and a wave. I stopped to chat to my neighbour who was pushing her grandson in a stroller and she introduced me to three other women from my block of flats. The woman in the tiny newsagent cellar told me I am now a Beltija, which means a woman from Valletta.

Gathering the threads

My life will catch up with me tomorrow afternoon. Thirty-seven boxes will be loaded into our tiny lift and deposited in my flat. The ship arrived in Malta over two weeks ago but the processes of getting my past back into my present have been complicated. In general, the transfer of my meagre collection from Australia has been without drama. It seems, however, that the transfer of funds is not so simple and that is why my possessions have languished in a bonded store for over a week. I'm not sure how I will feel when I start unpacking.

Last year, I was back in Australia for six months and all of that time, I was preparing to leave. I had decided to come and live in Malta and my return to Australia was about making that happen. Decisions about the detail hadn't been made when my friend, Lou, met me at Brisbane airport with my little car that he had been looking after. It was good to be back.

The first decision that had to be made was about my beautiful house on the bank of a mangrove creek. I had lived there for almost 20 years and there was a lot of myself built into the extensions and renovations I had made. Yet it was easy to decide to sell - the creative work was finished, it was good and I was ready to start my next piece. The process of selling was also easy once I had negotiated the uncertainties of the current economic climate by having the house independently valued. When I put it on the market, it sold within three days. The Real Estate people have a special name for it which I've forgotten - something like a heart sale, meaning that the buyer falls in love with the house. I was glad I could reject the other offer from a guy who didn't understand my house at all.

After that, I spent an interesting few months camping out in the house as the sale processes went through. I sorted through all my possessions and put my life into piles. There were treasured things like my collection of framed community theatre posters and the scale model of Bluenose, the first Americas cup contender, that needed to go to particular people. That pile was fairly easy as I had already thought about that for when I die. There were things that particular friends could make use of such as my fridge, my chopping block on wheels and my car. There were all the things, particularly books and lifetime memories, that I couldn't bring myself to dump and that is what will arrive here this afternoon. And all the rest went into a garage sale when my cousins came down from Mt Tamborine to help me. The night before the sale, I invited all my friends and neighbours to come to a party and choose a memento of me from the books and ear-rings that hadn't made it into the pile for Malta. Then after the garage sale, everything that was left went to the charity shop. I felt almost euphoric during that whole process, but my last night in an empty house was strange and sad. My plan was to spend the last day before settlement in the house so that I could go through and clean it lovingly before handing her (does a house take on the gender of its owner?) on. But my choir was singing at a peace rally on that day so everything became a bit rushed and I couldn't linger as I had hoped. In the end, I was racing to load all my final bits into my car and get the keys to the Estate Agent so I couldn't indulge the tears that were pricking my eyes.

After the house was sold, I felt different about being in Australia. It was as though now I was really a visitor. I did all the practical things like settle on my flat in Malta and arrange a loan on a small rental unit in Redlandshire so I would still have a foot on the ground. In the last few months I was house-sitting for friends, rehearsing every week with my choir ready for our exciting trip to sing at the International choral festival in Cuba and making my farewells with friends and relatives. But in my heart I was already on the way. In my next post I'll tell the story of my journey from Australia to Malta via New Zealand and Cuba.

The photo that heads up this post is of the waves crashing over Sliema front near the Fortizza. We have had a lot of big winds in the past weeks and when it is from the North or East the waves break magnificently over the North/East facing side of the island. My flat looks out on the Grand Harbour entrance and the waves cascade over the breakwater.

Hope for 2010

My first post for another year. It's now almost two years since I started the blog and looking back I am so glad that my niece, Sholeh, got me started. I now have a record of my travels in 2008/09 and as I settle back in Malta, I'll start documenting again my experiences day to day as well as putting up some summaries of packing up in Australia and shipping out to Malta via Cuba. The photo is of weathered rock in a fort we visited in Santiago de Chile.

I'm watching the red Round-the-Harbour launch come in through the gap in the breakwater from Sliema and now the big traditional luzzu that also does the trip. They are both crowded with tourists so there may be a cruise liner in. I have the computer set up at the living room window so I can watch the busy life of Grand Harbour. I love getting to know the moods of this small piece of the Mediterranean that can tell so much of the story of the lands that surround it. Every day, as the winds shift, the sea takes on a different colour. Today, the wind is from the South East and the sea is calm, rippled grey. Some high cloud gradually works its way across the sky and the wheeling pigeons flash white against it.

My shipment of the pared down remnants of my life will arrive here after 12th January. It will be strange to unpack all that memorabilia sorted and packed in another world, another life on the other side of the globe. In my next post I'll start telling the story of that process.