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A website site that answers the question:
Where did Mary Poppins come from?
| www.mary-poppins-birthplace.net |
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A website site that answers the question: Where did Mary Poppins come from? |
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Have your say on which design concept should celebrate the centenary of the first magical appearance of the Mary Poppins character in the life of its creator in the town of Bowral, Australia.  |
Yes, strange but true! Bowral, an Australian country town in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, has a strong claim to be considered the birthplace of Mary Poppins. Why this is so is explained on this website. And the real-life story of Mary Poppins' origins are as dramatic and magical as any fictional tale, revealing much about the author's motivation in creating the character as well as the underlying themes in her later stories.
Of course, claiming to be the birthplace of a fictional character is a little quirky, to say the least. The author of Mary Poppins, PL Travers (who was christened Helen Lyndon Goff), was born in Maryborough Queensland. But just as cricket's greatest batsman, Don Bradman, was born in Cootamundra and moved to Bowral as a child, so did Lyndon Goff move from Queensland. And just as Bowral was the place that Bradman was to learn his cricket and develop the prodigious talent that was to make him a sporting icon, so did Lyndon Goff begin her life as a storyteller and create the essence of a fictional character that was eventually to become an icon of childrens literature.*
Appropriately enough, the town of Bowral is the heart of the Southern Highlands BOOKtrail and Australia's first booktown project. The district can also lay claim to being home to both the author of the first book for children published in Australia (A Mother's Offering to Her Children 1841) and also the first work of fiction written by an Australian-born woman (Gertrude the Immigrant 1857). So the association that PL Travers and Mary Poppins has with the region enjoys an excellent pedigree.
See the links below for more information...
Paul McShane
Convenor - BookTown Australia
* Ironically, the "Boy from Bowral" lived a short distance down Holly Street from PL Travers childhood home. Valerie Lawson reports that there were only 4 houses in Holly Street at the time and the young Don Bradman was about the same age as Travers' youngest sister. It seems more than likely that the families knew each other and certainly the children would have played in the same street. It is possible that during the holidays on her return from boarding school, Lyndon would have been walking down Holly Street or wandering along the creek that runs on the western side of their home as she frequently did (her friend, Patricia Feltham, recalls her mentioning that) and she might have seen a young boy playing on the path with a cricket bat or wielding a stick by the creek .... who knows? ... perhaps each did have an unknown brush with fame!
Click on one of the links below to find out more...
Spit spot! Tell me the short version of the Mary Poppins Birthplace story please!
Acknowledgements: The content on this website is indebted to many sources and attribution is given where possible. In particular, it draws on the biography of PL Travers by Valerie Lawson Out of the Sky She Came (1999) and conversations with a longtime friend of P.L. Travers, Patricia Feltham. But no inference should be drawn that this or any other attribution indicates endorsement by those individuals of the website's content. In particular, neither individual is making the claim that Bowral is the birthplace of Mary Poppins. Responsibility for that claim and all the website content is accepted by Paul McShane, Convenor - BookTown Australia info@booktown.com.au
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