Sculptors: Elizabeth Hersey and Marni Koster
Location: City Hall Visitor Information Centre, Kent Street

This sculpture, commissioned in 2016, is the start of the trail and sits in a display cabinet inside the Maryborough Visitor Information Centre. It is a replica of the original Peace Cake made by bakers Stellmach and Sons, for the Mayoral Victory Ball held at the Maryborough City Hall on 29 April 1919.

Artist: Akos Juhasz
Location: City Hall, 388 Kent Street

The community canvas, now hanging in Maryborough City Hall, provided an opportunity for many people, with or without artistic skills, to create an enormous painting about love, forgiveness, respect, honour, family, peace, empathy, friendship and happiness. The result is a beautiful tapestry providing a vision of the future for the Maryborough community.

Artist: Shanay Scarlet Prince
Location: Town Hall Green, Adelaide Street

Maryborough’s crest was officially fixed for the city on 3 June 1985 following representations to London by the then Mayor, Cr Jock Anderson and Town Clerk, Noel Gorrie. The colours and imagery symbolise the city and its industries, with links to shipping and the pioneering days.

Artist: Brian Tisdall
Location: Maryborough Fire Station, corner Alice & Lennox streets

This mural, placed poignantly on the wall of Maryborough Fire Station, recognises the bravery of 12-year-old Lex Casperson, who with his dog “Foxie” saved his two brothers and a sister from a house fire on 28 July 1927. “Foxie” was given a new collar and his young master awarded the bronze medal for bravery by the Royal Humane Society.

Artist: Nigel Zschech
Location: Above King Kong Sales, 185 Adelaide Street

This mural, at the time it was painted in 2015, marked 85 years of Rotary in Maryborough and 110 years internationally. It recognises Rotary’s contribution to humanitarian services, the maintenance of high ethical standards and the advance of goodwill and peace. The Rotary emblem, depicted as the sun, shines its light on all people in need.

Artist: Fiona Foley
Location: Entry, Maryborough Library, 127 Bazaar Street

The Legends of Moonie Jarl, published in 1964, was the first book written and illustrated by indigenous Australians. Maryborough-born siblings Wilf Reeves and Olga Miller tell the Butchulla creation stories of K’gari (Fraser Island) – how the island and the birds, animals and plants were created – as well as teaching children the important values of respect and good manners.

Artist: Monika Bayer
Location: First floor, Maryborough Library, 127 Bazaar Street

The second of Maryborough’s three Mary Poppins’ murals, also at the library, is a reminder for avid readers of P.L Travers’ Mary Poppins Comes Back, about the horse that was part of a galactic circus. Mary takes Jane and Michael to visit the night sky where the animals were made of stars instead of fur.

Artist: Shanay Scarlet
Location: On side wall, 144 Bazaar Street

The subject of this mural, Barbara Dalton, was part of the Dalton Family Whip Cracking Show which performed at the Maryborough Markets. A whip cracker herself, she would put a rolled-up leaf in her mouth and let her husband and one of her sons crack it in half with a whip… and she never suffered a broken nose!

Artist: Michelle Valdivia
Location: Horsburgh Lane

An endangered species, the Mary River Turtle, was illegally collected and sold throughout the 1960s as pet “penny turtles”. One of the largest in Australia, this turtle frequents the Mary River from Gympie to the tidal reaches just upstream from Maryborough. The population is considered a critical priority for conservation.

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Artist: Benjamin Higgins
Location: Horsburgh Lane

This mural does not depict the World War I German fighter pilot but a flying ace of a different kind. The Red Baron is the common name for the Urothemis Aliena species of dragonfly, found along the Mary River and in the region’s lagoons and ponds. They are usually found in Queensland and in the northern parts of Western Australia, the Northern Territory and New Guinea.

Artist: Dan Krause
Location: Cnr Bazaar Street and Horsburgh Lane

A photograph taken at the turn of the century of a girl sitting on a four metre crocodile was the inspiration for this street art project. It’s believed the image was taken after a crocodile was shot in the Mary River by Walter McIndoe and displayed by the Cran family at their Iindah Sugar Plantation in 1903.

Artist: David Houghton
Location: 183 Bazaar Street

Horses and cattle on the Fraser Coast were often turned out to roam freely in times of drought. Some escaped and joined the wild horses called brumbies. Although wild horses still wander he Tuan State Forest and can be seen grazing by the roadside, the land available for brumbies to roam is vastly diminished.

Artist: Jacq Cronin
Location: Cnr Bazaar and Kent Streets

Jules Francois Archibald (1856-1919), was born John Feltham Archibald in Geelong and struggled to find work as a young man so he  “recreated himself” as a Frenchman, travelling to join Maryborough engineering firm John Walker & Co. He later formed a partnership launching The Bulletin magazine, amassing an estate of nearly $180,000, part of which he endowed as the annual prize for portrait painting – the coveted Archibald Prize.

Artist: Patrick Phillips
Location: 360 Kent Street

Queensland was the place for goats in the early 1900s and they were used in races, as a source of food, for their skin and to keep the grass tidy. The cartoon-style mural depicts a major goat race at the Shamrock Hotel in 1900 where an estimated 600 people turned out to watch the spectacle.

Artist: Lisa Baier
Location: Old Town Hall Arcade, 425 Kent Street

This sculpture, created to commemorate the Anzac Centenary in 2016, reminds us of the tremendous fortitude, commitment and support provided by women during war – the women who “soldiered on” at home while their men fought for freedom in foreign lands. The uniform of the mural subject consists of domestic objects including a colander for a helmet and cheese graters for epaulets.

Artist: Patrick Phillips
Location: Rear gate in Old Town Hall Arcade

During the Great Depression in 1935, out of work Maryborough miner Robert Brown packed his swag and headed south. He made a barrow to carry his possessions and mostly did fencing work on farms. He walked to Canberra, then on to Melbourne before heading to South Australia, eventually arriving in Western Australia’s capital of Perth, three years after he set off, covering a distance of almost 10,000 miles.

Artist: Nigel Zschech
Location: Rear of Telstra building, 133 Wharf Street

In September 1847, Governor Sir Charles FitzRoy named the Mary River in honour of his wife, Lady Mary Lennox, who was killed in a carriage accident three months later. Still saddened by her death, Sir Charles changed the name of Wide Bay Village to Maryborough a little over a year later in 1849. The mural symbolises the link between Lady Mary and the naming of the river and city.

Artist: Michael Wortel
Location: Rear of Telstra building, 133 Wharf Street.

The first country telephone exchange in Australia was opened in Maryborough in 1882. This mural shows telephonists working the manual exchange in the Post Office in 1958, before the telephone service was automated in 1960. The mural features everyday Maryborough people who have played a part in the city’s history.

Artist: Steve Falco
Location: 147 Richmond Street

Many of the characters from Mary Poppins’ make-believe world are captured in this mural. A tree with 17 cherries represents the street address, 17 Cherry Tree Lane, where Mary works for the Banks family. There is the red cow which couldn’t stop dancing and Bert creating his pavement paintings … in a world where everything magical is possible.

Artist: Dan Krause
Location: Corner Ellena & Richmond Streets

Ellen and Maud Dong were the daughters of Chinese migrants who arrived in Maryborough in the 1870s, originally in search of gold. The women, born in their parents’ home in Queen Street, took over the family business selling vegetables, plants and seeds to the Maryborough community in 1915 and ran it until 1956.

Artist: Brian Tisdall
Location: St Vincent de Paul, corner March & Kent Streets

The building featured in this mural, known locally as The Butter Factory, was constructed in 1910 on land purchased by the Maryborough Co-operative Dairy Association. For the next 80 years it produced cream, milk, butter and cheese for the surrounding district. During these decades, milkmen went out in trucks to meet customers who filled their glass jugs from the tap on the tank.

Artist: Craig Winter
Location: 354 Kent Street

Australia’s only outbreak of pneumonic plague is the subject of this mural honouring Maryborough nurses, Cecelia Bauer and Rose Adelaide Wiles, who sacrificed their lives caring for the afflicted family of a wharf worker in June 1905. Along with the nurses, five of the seven children in the family and a neighbour died in the outbreak.

Artist: Patrick Phillips
Location: Maryborough Military & Colonial Musuem, 106 Wharf Street

Australia’s largest single day casualty list of the Vietnam War – 18 dead and 24 wounded –  happened at the battle of Long Tan in a rubber plantation on the afternoon of the 18 August 1966.  The mural features a number of men who fought in the battle, including Hervey Bay’s Corporal Buddy Lea and company commander, Major Harry Smith, who later settled here.

Artist: Benjamin Higgins
Location: Maryborough Military and Colonial Museum, 106 Wharf Street

Maryborough’s most decorated World War II serviceperson, RAAF Squadron Leader Frank Lawrence, DFC DFM, participated in Operation Manna (food from heaven), carried out by 460 Squadron in 1945. RAF, RAAF, New Zealand, Canadian and Polish air crews flew 3301 sorties over Rotterdam between 29 April and 7 May, delivering humanitarian supplies to the starving Netherlands population.