Today was the Maryborough historical tour. The town made famous P.L. Travers. First we stopped at Lake Lenthall (another dam), the day area was quite picturesque but the camping area was open with little shade and quite a walk to the toilets, it was on my list of possible sites but I think Wongi Waterholes is a better site as it is set in actual bushland. From there we drove into Maryborough, I was looking for somewhere to print my permits for Fraser Island, first stop was the information center in the old historical town hall and they directed us to a place 3 blocks down which we couldn’t find however I was able to persuade a computer store manager to print them for me.

P.L. Travers, the author of Mary Poppins and recently the subject of the film “Saving Mr Banks” had the distinction of being born and raised in the old bank building on the corner of Kent and Richmond St in Maryborough. Just outside the building is a statue of Mary Poppins herself, at the rear of the building was a café that served an excellent shepherd’s pie that went down very well on a fairly cool day.

The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering around the historical part of Maryborough. It was a very important port situated on the Mary River in the late 19^th Century. About 12,000 pacific islanders were brought through this port for work on the sugar cane field and over 22,000 immigrants landed in this port for their first look at Australia. With the regular flooding of the Mary River you would wonder why the town still exists. There are flood markers outside the courthouse that measure the 12 mtr mark for the river. In 1893 it reached the 12.27 mtr mark, 1957 11.24 mtrs, 1992 9.48 mtrs, 2011 8.2 mtrs, 2013 10.7 mtrs.

Maryborough also lays claim to one of Australia’s first botanical gardens in their Queens Park complete with big guns, a fountain, a train and a Rotunda that could have come straight from Mary Poppins book.