Maryborough

We've come down the Mary River Valley to Maryborough, which is close to the river mouth. This is the birthplace of P.L. Travers, the author of the Mary Poppins stories, and, although she left Maryborough at the age of 8, the town claims full credit.

Maryborough's original wealth was based on its status as a port city, and up until federation in 1901 was the port of entry for thousands of immigrants. There are many attractive old buildings reflecting this history. These days Maryborough is a tourism and agriculture centre, with sugar cane grown in the surrounding areas. Surprisingly, it also hosts some heavy industry, with many of Queensland's trains built in town.

Being savvy travellers, we were keen to front up for the free walking tour around town. The 'Mary Poppins' dressed guide was interesting and knowledgable about her home town. We were also lucky to be in town for the monthly family day in the local park. Although the drizzly weather meant that the promised brass band didn't appear, we added another boat trip notch to our belt with the half price cruise down the river.

The Maryborough local market is held weekly in the town centre, and has a good selection of local fresh produce. We went along on both Thursdays we were here and stocked up on cheap fresh fruit and veggies. On another day we visited Hervey Bay, a big tourist destination on the caost only about 30 km away, although we didn't really see the attraction of the town.

Unfortunately rain confined us to the van on a couple of our days here, but we still managed several games of golf, and for a change both played well enough to finally make a return on our green fees, to the order of 6 golf balls between us. It may not sound like much, but it is a big change to our usual result!