A couple of generations (and several political administrations) ago, when many of today's foreign residents decided Gozo would be an ideal place to settle, and eventually to retire, people came over because the island was virtually devoid of tourists.

Tourists were people who went to Majorca, the Costas or the Adriatic. Package holidays were a new idea and people who shunned them called themselves travellers, rather than tourists, and found places off the beaten track. Like Gozo.

Crossing the channel on the Imperial Eagle, sharing the journey with a fuel tanker, a donkey, cartons of tinned food and a 100,000 toilet rolls, was part of the adventure.

The roads, then as now, were potholed, some of them embellished by a transparent layer of water-soluble tarmac sprayed over soil, and visitors who noticed that collapsed walls remained unrepaired, with stones lying in the road, remarked that "It'll be a nice place, when it's finished". Gozitan sages, of which there appeared to be many, replied gently: "Better that it had never started".

More than 5,000 years ago this was, after all, the first place on earth to have stone buildings. And construction work has been going on ever since. If a fraction of the enthusiasm that is expended on development (and over-development) was spent instead on the tourism industry, Gozo would be teeming with visitors, instead of welcoming fewer with successive years.

So when people start to ask whether we are facing "The end of Gozo as we know it", it may be that we are looking not at the end, but at a new beginning.

For tourists and travellers have finally got the message. The authorities have done everything possible to deter them from visiting in the first place, and then to dissuade them from coming back.

The biggest construction jobs (which most people would imagine might be better tackled in the cooler months) have actually been scheduled to start in summer. Last year it was Mgarr harbour and the Duke of Edinburgh project in Victoria. This year it is the road (the only main thoroughfare on the island) that runs to tourist centres like Dwerja and San Lawrenz, and to Gharb, which is probably the most popular village for foreign residents. And there are rumours that work on the road to Xlendi is yet to start.

The newly arriving foreign traveller, heading for this tiny island and having already spent a small fortune to get there, picks up his hired car at Luqa and drives out of the airport onto a complicated set of road works (started this Easter). He gets the benefit of a bit of new cross-country road (if he can find it, for it is not signposted from the airport), parts which may already be closed for repair; and on the last, slow, stretch, he faces speed cameras and wardens waiting mob-handed in case he crosses a single white line.

He arrives at Cirkewwa, a depressing building site (with not much evidence of any building being done) where the kiosk at which he queues for a ticket is probably unmanned. And he boards the once-new ferries - to find the seats ripped and badly stained, the doors broken, the floors worn... and the toilets being cleaned during the voyage.

At Mgarr, another building site, he encounters total chaos with coaches, taxis and private cars driving across the flow of disembarking vehicles, a perverse traffic-lane system, and bewildered pedestrians wandering all over the place.

The likelihood is that his journey towards Victoria will be blocked by one or two cranes and cement mixers, the traffic lights may not be working, and if he needs to drive further than the capital he will have to embark on a round-the-island tour, through a maze of narrow village streets on which lorries are parked (and stones are left in the road), before reaching a destination where he will doubtless encounter even more cranes. (Note for ornithologists: the crane is a protected species on Gozo.)

If he goes for a walk around what's left of the cliffs he takes his life into his hands, literally - for a few weeks ago a "hunter" was boasting in a bar that he "shot three tourists this morning". I met two of them, still picking lead shot out of their flesh, and we are waiting to see how their case is handled. Not their suitcase, for we all know the risk they take with that, on their homeward journey. And then he faces being charged Lm1.50 for a cup of coffee in a so-called "five star" hotel.

Is it any wonder, then, that a Gozitan boatman who earns his living from divers reports having had only a dozen customers in the first six months of this year? Or that some of the best restaurants on the islands are empty except when the Maltese come over at the weekend to check on their investment in new development?

So when the government and voluntary officials tasked with the tourist and tourism businesses publicly wring their hands about the decline in visitor numbers we can recognise this as no more than a cynical act. The problem is not lack of awareness about Gozo as a holiday destination: the problem is that the travelling public is already far too aware.

The authorities have done everything short of putting up notices at Cirkewwa proclaiming Tourists Go Home.

The effect of all this is that, already this summer, residents are enjoying a considerable amount of freedom of movement. There are fewer visitors getting under their feet, more spaces for parking, less congestion in the supermarkets, more room in restaurants. And the traffic wardens (warned against booking paranoid Maltese drivers, and unwilling to ticket their neighbours) are having to work harder to find cars with a K registration.

The knock-on may be that a few second-rate restaurants, and maybe even those hotels that haven't maintained their standards, will have to close. And then, maybe, prices will drop to attract the handful of people that doggedly turn up.

Gozo will become a backwater again. And travellers who liked the place because it was quiet and unspoilt will recognise that it has refound its soul, and will start coming back and spending money.

Not in any great numbers, though. So there is no need for any more new buildings to cater for them.