www.mary-poppins-birthplace.net	Home Page
	A website site that answers the question: Where did Mary Poppins come from?

Mary Poppins, the magical nanny made famous worldwide by the 1964 Walt Disney movie of the same name, is a fictional character created by author, P.L. Travers. One question pondered by many readers of the Mary Poppins books and fans of the movie has been: Where did Mary Poppins come from? The question was frequently put to the author during her lifetime, but she invariably offered a vague or evasive reply. It is a mystery that may finally now have an answer, thanks to detailed biographical research by a Sydney-based journalist/author and the flash of insight by a 12 year-old girl. And the answer? Well, the place with the probably the strongest claim to be the "birthplace" of Mary Poppins - both in a symbolic and literal sense - is a town called Bowral.

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, though there is no evidence they ever met and it is unlikely they would have, given that Bradman was a very young child at the time Lyndon Goff was a teenager. It is possible, though, that during the holidays on her return from boarding school, Lyndon would have been walking down the street or wandering along the creek that runs on the western side of Holly Street as she frequently did (as her friend, Patricia Feltham, recalls her mentioning) 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...

Latest News! Bowral Tulip Time Parade Features Mary Poppins Birthplace Float

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