Maryborough’s creative heart and history is now exposed on the walls of central city buildings in a mural trail of 39 installations and paintings.
The Maryborough Mural Project, launched in 2015 with the first mural of Sister Mary MacKillop of the Sisters of St Joseph, has grown to become a serious tourist attraction in the heritage city with trail brochures eagerly sought from the city’s Visitor Information Centre in Kent Street. The murals are a “living canvas” telling the stories of Maryborough’s great and the quirky past from the time when it was Queensland’s major industrial city at the turn of the century, building naval ships and railway rolling stock, and later making a major contribution to both world wars.
The murals are a “passion project” of the project founders, Maryborough’s Deb Hannam and Elizabeth Lowrie, who were inspired by the art tourism created by cities around the world which have established mural trails that attract hundreds of thousands each year. The city is aiming to emulate Canada’s Vancouver Island town of Chemainus which has more than 40 murals and claims to be attracting 400,000 visitors a year to its trail. The Maryborough trail is a flat walk over 10 city blocks covering a distance of about two kilometres. The city’s connection as the birthplace of Mary Poppins creator, Pamela Lyndon Travers (born Helen Lyndon Goff in 1899), features heavily with three separate murals and the heroic nurses who gave their lives combating the only outbreak of the pneumonic plague in 1905 are also remembered.
Mural trail walking maps, available from the Maryborough Visitor Information Centre in Kent Street, make suggestions on how the trail can be walked in separate sections if distance and mobility are a concern for some visitors.
For a full list of the murals, visit visitfrasercoast.com
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