Maryborough Mural Trail

Be inspired by Maryborough’s growing tourist attraction and walk the Mural Trail, telling the quirky and serious stories of the city’s colourful past from the time when it was Queensland’s major industrial city building naval ships, sugar mills and railway rolling stock.

Launched in 2015, the trail now has 37 large scale murals and installations adorning buildings in the city’s Central Business District.

Start your journey in Kent Street at the Maryborough Visitor Information Centre in City Hall and collect a trail map and while there learn about the baking of the historic Peace Cake and how the trail began.

The map shows the location of each mural and installation and makes suggestions on how the 2km trail over 10 city blocks can be walked in separate sections if distance and mobility is a concern, or in one continuous journey of discovery.

Staff at the visitor centre will point out the many coffee and speciality shops, parks and places to relax along the way, making this one of Maryborough’s unique experiences.

Explore The Trail

1. Peace Cake Sculpture

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.

2. Community Canvas

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.

3. Maryborough’s Floral Emblem

Artist: E.J. ‘Filka’ Zyla
Location: Kent Street (opposite Town Hall Green)

Maryborough’s Callistemon Citrinus (crimson bottlebrush) was declared the floral emblem of the city in 1957. The plant is native to coastal areas of eastern Australia and widely cultivated, thriving in wet conditions. Callistemon is from two Greek words meaning beautiful stamens and citrinus, describing the lemon scent of the leaves.

4. The Crest

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.

5. Brave Lexie and ‘Foxie’

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.

6. The Aviator

Artist: Akos Juhasz, designed by Brian Tisdall
Location: 202 Adelaide Street

Aviator, garage owner and Maryborough Holden dealer, Samuel William Hecker, was often in the news in the 1940s flying his Miles Falcon aircraft between Maryborough and Brisbane to attend meetings of the Queensland Automobile Chamber of Commerce. Samuel was a foundation member and president of the Maryborough Aero Club.

7. Adding Hope To The Journey

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.

8. The Legends of Moonie Jarl

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.

9. Man In The Moon

Artist: Terry Tomlin
Location: First floor, Maryborough Library, 127 Bazaar Street

Mary Poppins author, Pamela Lyndon Travers, was born Helen Lyndon Goff in the Australian Joint Stock Bank (now the Story Bank) in Maryborough’s CBD on 9 August 1899. In Mary Poppins and the House Next Door – the inspiration for this mural – she says everything lost on earth is up on the moon and the man on the moon is the keeper.

10. Galactic Horse

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.

11. The Whip Cracker

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!

12. Prime Minister Fisher

Artist: Brian Tisdall
Location: Above awning, 144 Bazaar Street

A founding member of the Labor Party in Queensland, Andrew Fisher held the seat of Wide Bay from 1901 to 1915. He served as Australia’s Prime Minister and Treasurer for three terms from 1908 until 1915 and committed troops to fight in World War I.

13. Mary River Turtle

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.

14. Red Baron

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.

15. Under The Sea

Artist: E.J Zyla
Location: Horsburgh Lane

Art showcasing Hervey Bay’s marine ecology, this mural, evokes a sense of curiosity and wonder about the Fraser Coast region. The jelly fish, manta rays, tiger and whale sharks depicted form the region’s rich under sea ecology and are part of the world generally not seen or widely understood by humans.

16. The Girl and the Croc

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.

17. The Brumbies

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.

18. Comet Man

Artist: Nigel Zschech
Location: 175 Bazaar Street.

Once the saying was “only in America” but after the exploits of amateur Maryborough astronomer, Mervyn Jones, who found an unnamed comet on 1 July 1967 by scanning the western sky using binoculars, you could be forgiven for saying “only in Maryborough”. The mystery object was eventually named the Mitchell-Jones-Gerber Comet.

19. Jules Francois Archibald

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.

20. The Goat Race

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.

21. The Peace Mural

Artist: E.J Zyla
Location: 411 Kent Street

The Peace Mural is Maryborough’s wish in a time of world conﬂict about race, sex and religion for continued tolerance and acceptance, where people celebrate difference and live in peace. The mural is designed to complement the Peace Cake sculpture in City Hall at the beginning of the trail, focusing on the word “peace”.

22. The Domestic Front

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.

23. Out Of Work

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.

24. St Mary of the Cross Mackillop

Artist: Patrick Phillips
Location: St Mary’s Church yard, 271 – 275 Adelaide Street

In 1870, the Sisters of St Joseph, a religious order founded by Mary MacKillop, established a school and residence in Adelaide Street, the beginning of the Catholic Church’s formal education and religious administration in Maryborough. Mary MacKillop, declared Australia’s ﬁrst saint in 2010, the ﬁrst parish priest, Father Paul Tissot, who built the ﬁrst Maryborough Catholic Church, and school children, are depicted in the mural.

25. Our World

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.

26. The Ladies of the Exchange

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.

27. Wharf Street, 1888

Artist: Terry Tomlin
Location: Inside Family Heritage Institute, 164 Richmond Street

This mural of Wharf Street in 1888, during Maryborough’s boom period as a migrant port of entry, shows the iron-hulled sailing ship, SS Eastminster, which arrived carrying the bells for St Paul’s Church of England bell tower. The ship made several trips to Australia but on her return passage to Newcastle she was lost during a cyclone.

28. Mary Poppins

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.

29. The Dong Sisters

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.

30. The Ferry

Artist: Kerry Nicholson
Location: 115 Richmond Street

The ﬁrst known ferry service to Granville was a hand-operated punt which crossed the river at the bottom of March Street, called Victoria Ferry. It was replaced by mural subject, the iron steam punt, Alert. Passengers wanting to cross at night would ring bells either side of the river, to attract the attention of the night operator.

31. Milking Time

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.

32. Courageous Care

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.

33. The Brewer

Artist: Nigel Zscheck
Location: Home Brewing Supplies, 278 Kent Street

This mural tells the story of Polish migrant Louis Emmanuel Steindl, who arrived in Australia in 1871 and opened the Bavarian Brewery in Granville seven years later in 1878. At its peak the business produced 120 hogsheads of beer a week (one hogshead is about 242 litres). Lois died in 1913 with a considerable fortune.

34. The Battle of Long Tan

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.

35. Frank Lawrence

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.

36. Tubby Clayton

Artist: Akos Juhasz
Location: Maryborough Military and Colonial Museum, 106 Wharf Street

While serving in Belgium as an army chaplain, Maryborough-born Reverend Philip Thomas Byard “Tubby” Clayton co-founded Talbot House, (known as Toc H) as a unique place of rest and sanctuary for British troops serving on the Western Front during World War I. A notice inside urged all who entered to abandon rank. The Toc H movement continues today.

Maryborough’s Mural Trail is a community project driven by local businesswomen, Elizabeth Lowrie and Deborah Hannam, who lead a volunteer committee creating large-scale murals and installations in the CBD as permanent, visual attractions for tourists and locals. Much of the materials and some artist labour has been donated to the project, which has been supported by local families, businesses and the Fraser Coast Regional Council.

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