David Whitley rocks up in the Queenland town of Maryborough to find it suspiciously deserted...

Bank holiday Mondays are usually quiet affairs, but the one I arrived in Maryborough on was suspiciously so. The tourist information office was closed, the streets looked deserted and it was as if everyone was tucked up at home nursing a hangover.

The reason for this soon became clear upon looking at the newspaper headlines. The previous day, Maryborough had entered the Guinness World Record books for hosting the world’s biggest ever pub crawl.

This may seem a little odd. After all, Maryborough is just a small country town, and previous record holders have included London and New York. It’s also a rather genteel place. It is known for its historic buildings, riverboat cruises and railway heritage. It’s universally agreed to be an exceptionally pleasant place.

It’s the sort of place that attracts Australia’s many grey nomads – it’s an afternoon tea rather than a boozy session crowd.

In fact, if you need one indication of what Maryborough is about, check out the statue of Mary Poppins on the corner of Kent and Richmond Street. This may seem somewhat incongruous until you realise that P.L. Travers, the woman who wrote the books about the famous nanny, was born in Maryborough.

The town also has a wholesome, family-orientated Mary Poppins Festival, which takes place during the first week of July and includes a sing-a-long movie screening.

The town’s other claim to fame is its concentration of ‘Queenslander’ houses. As the name would suggest, these houses are fairly unique to Queensland and are raised on stumps to both avoid flooding and help circulate air through the building.

The buildings are often wooden (although more lavish ones drip with wrought iron) and have large verandas. They’re really quite gorgeous – especially when the sun is out.

The town likes to boast that it’s the Queenslander capital of Australia, and it’s hard to dispute this. It’s one of those places where going for a stroll around the suburbs, checking out the houses and the well kept gardens, makes for a fascinating afternoon out.

But none of this really tallies with the world’s greatest pub crawl, does it? The recent attempt was Maryborough’s fifth bash at the crown. The rules stated that every participant had to drink at – and get a card stamped at – at least 10 pubs during the crawl.

This was no casual affair – bus transfers were laid on for getting to some of the more out-of-the-way pubs, and a pink fancy dress code was both installed and gleefully adhered to. By the end of the day, the town – population 26,000 – had managed to smash the record, with 4,657 making it to the end with card intact.

And for such an achievement, you can probably forgive them for being a bit quiet the next day.