Maree's Rain Drum
“It rains here a hundred and seventy days a year. I’d never once heard it play a tune.” — Why a 67-year-old welder on New Zealand’s West Coast is letting her last 210 hand-tuned rain drums go far below their worth.
Maree Tierney at her shed in Ross, where she has tuned rain drums for the last nine years.
On the West Coast of the South Island, rain is just how life is. Near Hokitika it falls about a hundred and seventy days a year. For thirty-six years, Maree Tierney worked through all of it in a tin shed behind her house in Ross.
She welded farm gates, cattle stops and tank stands. Half the farms between Ross and Harihari still open a gate she made. For the last six years, she has made only one thing: small steel rain drums that the rain plays by itself.
There’s one last batch on the shelf in her shed. After that, she stops.
The Piece of Scrap She Left Out by the Tank
The stump beside her rainwater tank. The first drum is still sitting on it.
In March 2017, a café in Hokitika ordered a steel leaf strainer from Maree. It was a flat disc with slots cut into it, made to sit on top of their rainwater tank and keep the leaves out. The slots came out uneven. She put it on the old stump beside her own tank to fix later. Then a big job came in, and she forgot about it.
In May, a nor’wester came in off the Tasman and it rained for five days straight. Maree was in the shed with the stove going and the rain hammering the iron roof. After thirty years, she didn’t even hear the roof any more.
Then she heard something that wasn’t the roof.
She pulled on her gumboots and went outside. The strainer she’d given up on was playing notes. Every drop that hit one of the cut tongues rang out as a clear, clean tone.
“It rains here a hundred and seventy days a year. I’d never once heard it play a tune.”
By August she had built a proper one, with nine tuned tongues. It sits on the same stump today. By 2020, her shed made nothing else.
“I spent thirty-six years making noise for a living. Then the rain taught me to make music.”
The Neighbours Keep Asking Where the Music Is Coming From
One drop, one note. The tuning means no note can land wrong.
A rain drum doesn’t sound like a wind chime. Each drop makes one soft, clear note. All nine notes are tuned to fit together, so there’s never a wrong one.
In a light shower, you hear a few notes a minute, with long gaps between them. In steady rain, it plays a slow, gentle tune. In a proper downpour, the weather sets the rhythm and the drum plays the notes.
People stop at the gate to ask where the music is coming from. Most of them don’t believe it’s the rain until they see it for themselves.
Turn Your Sound On and Listen
On a stump in the rain — tap to listen.
On a garden table — tap to listen.
What’s in the Old Butter Box on Her Shelf
A few hundred letters, kept in an old butter box above the bench.
Maree keeps the letters people send her in an old wooden butter box from the dairy factory in Hokitika. There are a few hundred of them now, from all over the country. She pulled out three.
The first came from Lyn in Invercargill. She put her drum on the railing of her deck, facing south. Her note said: “Every southerly that comes through, the deck starts playing.”
The second came from Graham in Tauranga, who is seventy-four. He put his drum in the middle of his late wife’s rose garden. When it doesn’t rain, his grandkids turn the hose on it to make it play.
“She always wanted music in that garden. Now it has some.”
The third was a postcard from Moana in Gisborne. Her drum sits under the spouting by the back door. She hasn’t moved it since the day it came.
“Everyone used to groan when it rained. Now we open the back door.”
“That one I think about a lot,” Maree said, and put the box back on the shelf.
Why the Cheap Ones Sound Like a Tin Can
Nine tongues, each one tuned by hand and checked by ear.
The rain drums sold cheap online are stamped out and tuned by a machine. Nobody ever listens to them before they’re shipped. Maree’s are different in four ways.
All nine notes come from the same five-note scale. Whatever tongue a drop lands on, it fits with the note before it. There’s no wrong note.
Maree tunes every drum a touch lower than the usual pitch. The notes come out softer and rounder, which suits a garden in the open air.
The steel is powder-coated and sealed against rust and the salt air off the Tasman. Maree’s own drum has sat on that stump through nine West Coast winters. It has never come inside.
Every spring a bellbird comes to the kōwhai tree outside her bench window. For nine springs, Maree checked the top note of every drum against its call. If the note sat nicely next to the bellbird, it was right.
The Spring the Bellbird Went Quiet
The kōwhai outside her window. The bellbirds come back every September.
Thirty-six years of grinders, hammers and steel have worn down Maree’s hearing, the high notes first. She noticed it in 2021, when she stopped hearing the jug click off. Since then, the top notes of every drum have been harder and harder to hear.
She tuned one last batch, slowly, through the winter. Then in September the kōwhai flowered and the bellbirds came back. She stood at the bench window and watched one open its beak. She heard nothing.
“The bellbird still comes to my kōwhai every morning. I just can’t hear it any more.”
She can still weld a gate. But you can’t tune a drum by ear when you can’t hear the top note. So the 210 drums on her shelf are the last ones. When they’re gone, there won’t be any more.
A hand-tuned steel drum from an instrument maker costs the better part of eight hundred dollars. Maree is letting her last 210 go at cost. A homewares chain in Auckland wanted to buy every one of them. A collector in Queenstown wanted a set for a glass cabinet. She said no to both.
“A rain drum in a glass cabinet is just a lump of steel. It needs to be out in the weather.”
While the last batch is still on the shelf:
Check AvailabilityHand-tuned by Maree in Ross, West Coast — one of the last 210
What People Wrote After Their First Wet Day
★★★★★
“I put it on the deck the day it arrived. Two days later it rained all afternoon. My husband and I sat at the open ranch slider with a cuppa and didn’t say a word for half an hour.”
★★★★★
“Bought one for Mum’s eightieth. She has it on a post by the kitchen window and rings me every time it rains. In Dunedin, that’s a lot of phone calls.”
★★★★★
“The grandkids were sure I was playing it from inside with a remote. They stood out in the rain in their gumboots for ten minutes trying to catch me out.”
Three Honest Questions Before You Order
Can it stay outside all year?
Yes. The steel is sealed against rust, and frost and salt air don’t hurt it. Maree’s has never come inside. If you get proper gales where you live, give it a spot that’s a bit sheltered from the worst of the wind.
How long will they be available?
Only while the last batch lasts. There are 210 drums, and Maree won’t be tuning any more. They’re only sold through this page, not in shops.
What if it arrives and I don’t love it?
You have 30 days to send it back for a full refund, no questions asked. One email to the support team is all it takes.
Spring rain is back on the Coast. The last batch is on the shelf right now.
Check AvailabilityLimited stock — 210 hand-tuned drums from Maree’s shed, while they last