History of Tambourine & Surrounding Region – ‘Piano Rock’

In this edition, a little bit about the mysterious Piano Rock (if you know some more – please contact us):
From some investigation, it would appear that the large ‘block-shaped’ rock perched precariously halfway up Tamborine Mountain Road was painted into the shape of a piano as far back as the 1960’s, a time when Tamborine had a primary school, and school children of the school now recall with delight how they would travel the mountain road with their parents and jostle with siblings to see who would be the first to gain a glimpse of the rock painted like a piano. They now fondly show it to their own children (information retrieved from Lost Logan).

Piano Rock painted (image from Lost Logan)
Piano Rock painted (image from Lost Logan)

In 2007, Piano Rock was the scene of a ‘staged murder’. Two men from Loganlea choked a friend to death with twine, as the victim drove his Holden Clubsport sedan. One man in the back seat strangled the victim from behind while the passenger helped steer the vehicle. The pair then arranged the corpse in his car and pushed it down an embankment at Piano Rock to make it look like a fatal road accident. Unfortunately for the pair it was obvious to paramedics and police that the victim had not died in a car crash because of the way rigor mortis had set in from being put into the boot, which indicated that he must have been lying down shortly after his death (information retrieved from Brisbane Times).

The story goes that in about 1966 a young man and his friends once “painted a rock that looked like a piano into a piano but then didn’t re-paint it again”.
Curiously, the ‘re-painting job’ seems to have been handed down through the generations of a family – from grandfather to son – who come in to repaint it each time, especially when the council used to consistently re-paint it black! A man called David Jones has also been named as apparently one of the original re-painters (retrieved from a G Man ABC Broadcast).
An incredible piece of ‘street art’ continuously, lovingly, and mysteriously re-painted over the decades!

Piano Rock recently stabilised with batter stabilisation
Piano Rock recently stabilised with batter stabilisation to prevent slippage