Concerts in the years following the disaster included performances by a very young Ron Erle Grainer, taught piano-playing from the age of four by his mother and encouraged to learn the violin by an elderly Welsh miner. As Grainer's music skills developed, he started demonstrating an ability to reconstruct tunes he had heard at school or on gramophone records. Mary Wardle, a classical music singer, historian, and former resident of Mt Mulligan, remembers Grainer performing on keyboard instruments "when he could barely reach the pedals."