Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Helen Lyndon Goff is no household name. Nor does PL Travers warrant a special cranny in every librarian’s heart. But Mary Poppins? That’s different. The nanny with the aeronautic brolly is a worldwide legend.
Helen Goff, soon to be Pamela Travers, the creator of Mary Poppins, grew up in a cattle town on the Darling Downs called Allora, just out of Toowoomba.
According to Valeria Lawson, the author’s biographer, little Helen would lie down in her Herbert Street home, under the stars with her bank manager of a Dad, and audit the constellations. Looking up, did the lass imagine the spokes of an umbrella one evening….?
Being a private address, the Herbert home is averse to any Mary-freak poppin in for a tour, but you can take a short drive to the corner of the New England Highway and South Street – next-door to the showgrounds – and witness a granite nanny with a spoonful of sugar in her carpetbag.