Today I scouted out the mysterious Mgarr Ix-Xini pumping station on Gozo with the wise painter Caroline Said Lawrence for the Forgotten Landscapes project.

With a rented car, I proceeded to pick her up and make our way to the ferry. The journey was filled with conversations of art, politics, family history and her travel experiences in the middle east. It was fascinating and always interesting to hear about the stories of a person’s family as it shows how they shaped them today.

Towers
Photography by Mark Magro
Copyright 2016. Wanted Media. All Rights Reserved

I have been to the valley where the pumping station was but was never inside the structure as it is extremely hard to access. However, through the help of the Mayor of Sannat, the nearby district, he was able to provide an guide and a path to follow.

After several wrong turns we ended up at the beautiful bay of Mgarr IX-Xini, most famous for the Angelia Jolie and Brad Pitt film, By the Sea. As we parked we proceeded to walk through a narrow path of bamboo, rocks, valleys of prickly bushes and ungodly rocks we finally reached the entrance to the pumping station.

Entrance
Photography by Mark Magro
Copyright 2016. Wanted Media. All Rights Reserved

The structure, almost etched into the rocks of this enclosing valley was beautiful and one must wonder how it was possible to manufacture given the difficulty of reaching the place.

The main entrance was littered with prickly bushes and the sounds of pigeons flying did not make the interior a welcoming place. However, we both put on our adventure caps and proceeded to enter the structure with our eyes open and our feet cautiously forward.

Graffiti
Photography by Mark Magro
Copyright 2016. Wanted Media. All Rights Reserved

The interior was vast dark and had remnants of Maltese tiles from long ago. The high arched ceilings and dark nearby rooms which contains huge open pits that lead into a dark chasm that I dared not look down into.

In the center of the complex there was a massive five level hole where the water used to have been housed. The depth of this was terrifying to look down into and looked like an inverted apartment building. The only way to gain access to this was through a spiral staircase which has long been filled with rubble. God knows what things or treasures might lie below.

As the daylight neared its end. We traversed back to the car with the occasional glace back at the magnificent structure and the excitement of revisiting the place with the painter’s tool at hand and more historical research in the belt.
Mark M.