A tribute to Mary Poppins

The proposed celebrations in Bowral would coincide with the Australian opening of the Broadway musical Mary Poppins in July next year.

Father and daughter Paul and Melissa McShane have found author P.L Travers’ story of a magical nanny was inspired by an event that occurred in Bowral exactly 99 years ago this week.

Travers (originally Lyndon Goff) moved to Bowral with her mother and sisters after her father died in 1907.

In a letter to a friend in later years, she recalled that a family drama when she was about 11 years old was the origin of Mary Poppins.

In the midst of a heavy downpour of rain, Travers’ mother ran from the Holly Street house, threatening to drown herself in the creek.

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To calm her sisters, Travers gathered them around the fire and told them a story about a magical, flying white horse.

By the time Travers wrote the first Mary Poppins book, published in 1934, the white horse had become a magical nanny who flies into the lives of the Banks family.

Based on Travers’ memories and original research, the McShanes have pinpointed the most likely date of the family drama as being between July 18 and 20, 1910, most likely July 19.

(Bowral rainfall records show only one significant downpour between January and August, 1910, an otherwise very dry year.)

Mr McShane, the convenor of Booktown Australia, said Bowral was definitely the birthplace of P.L Travers as a storyteller, as well as her most famous character.

He said the Mary Poppins stories had obvious parallels with P.L. Travers’ life in Bowral: An absent father, a distracted mother, and the story of a magical white horse that brings order and peace to an unhappy family.

Melissa began researching P.L. Travers’ links with Bowral when the 2004 Festival of the Book featured a Mary Poppins Trail.

With her father, she has traced the story through original State Library documents and interviewed Travers’ friends and biographer.

For a 2004 youth design competition to rejuvenate Corbett Plaza, Melissa came up with a Poppins-themed entry which included a statue to commemorate the author.

Of the three Australian towns where P.L. Travers lived, Bowral is the only one not to formally recognise its famous former resident.

Mr McShane and Melissa are working with former Mayor Gordon Lewis, Bowral Ratepayers Association president Nick Campbell-Jones, Southern Highlands Business Chamber (SHBC) president Terry Oakes-Ash, Empire Cinema co-owner Richard Ruhfus and representatives of arts bodies to plan the 2010 centenary celebrations.

Now a Year 11 student at Chevalier College, Melissa said she had not expected to be still researching P.L. Travers when she started five years ago.

“I thought it would all be over,” she said.

“I really thought we would be looking at a statue by now.

“But that’s okay - now we can make it an even bigger event.”