General News
2 January, 2026
Girl on the Drum: 50 years
The Girl on the Drum may be an unusual spectacle, but it’s Maryborough’s spectacle — one that has stood the test of time and marks not only New Year's Day, but celebrates the community's resilience.
Drum spectacle marks its half-century
Girl on the Drum may be an unusual spectacle, but it’s Maryborough’s spectacle, one the community celebrated a half-century of on New Year’s Day.
Until recently a largely unchanged Girl on the Drum was performed at the end of the Maryborough Highland Gathering.
Atop a drum a young girl, carried by three drum bearers, would be carried out of the grandstand as bagpipes played.
In front of the grandstand she would be lifted on the men’s shoulders, around 10 feet above the ground, sharing an eyeline with the audience, before doing two rounds of the Highland Fling as the massed pipe bands played.
The Girl on the Drum was introduced to the Maryborough Highland Society by local member Morrie Hutchinson, who witnessed it while attending a twilight highland games meeting in Aberdeen, Scotland.
A scottish band from Iowa, USA, had demonstrated the performance there for the first time in 1960.
A group of locals, including then Highland Society president Bill Sinclair and highland dancing teacher Heather McLeish, got the performance on the field for the 1976 Highland Gathering.
Christine McCorry (nee Maas) was 10-years-old when she became the first of now 13 girls on the drum.
A competitive highland dancer at the time she was given only three days to practice for the drum dance when the original girl changed her mind.
Ninety-five year old Alan Maas, Mrs McCorry’s dad, was surprised that his daughter said yes when he asked if she’d do it.
“I thought she would have duck shoved it and said no bugger ya,” he said.
“It was a pretty big thing to ask her.”
Mrs McCorry said she doesn’t think the first year was the most professional.
“You just gave things a go in those days,” she said.
Mr Maas has played the bagpipes since WWII, but he was also a cabinet maker, and invented the design of the drum which was used until the platform replaced the drum bearers in 2024.
Knowing she couldn’t dance on the skin of the drum, which was donated by the Maryborough Brass Band, he cut out a circle of particle board which was a new material at the time.
The next year, realising his daughter couldn’t see if she was centred without looking down, he cut out a ring of masonite with a 12 inch centre.
“She used to dance in the circle and could feel where the masonite edge was,” Mr Maas said.
Next was the issue of the drum bearers who weren’t always the same height and whose shoulders were hurt by the edge of the drum.
Bruce ‘Darky’ Duncan, who was among the first drum bearers and would do another 40 years, remembered it well.
“Because we didn’t know anything we had the drum sitting on our shoulder and it just about chewed through our collarbone,” he said.
Mr Maas said he improvised the rubber pads used in the following years to make it more secure and comfortable.
“We just used our imagination a bit I think,” he said.
He was also the first in a long tradition of MacGyvered ways to practice the performance.
For his daughter he improvised two trestle ladders, with tyres on top then the drum above about shoulder height, and mattresses around in case she fell.
“Tyres made it a bit springy like on the shoulders and like the men it moves,” Mr Maas said.
“Little bit more to it than putting a drum up and saying dance.”
The Girl on the Drum would see its next big change with the third dancer Meletta Dellar who admitted she might have set a precedent.
Previous to her the Girl on the Drum did the Highland Fling once, she did it twice.
“The music was for dancers in front of the grandstand,” she previously said.
“Ever since then the Girl on the Drum does it twice.”
The performance would remain largely unchanged for decades until 2021 and 2022 when the Highland Gathering was cancelled due to the COVID pandemic.
The drum, which former Maryborough Highland Society president Andrew Rae said was looking “tired”, was damaged by one of the girls who took it home to practice.
“When it came back to us at the Highland Society the top was off it and it had a couple of big splits in the timber,” he said.
He took it to his friend Terry Murphy who glued and rescrewed it, as well as painted it black, ready for Castlemaine-based sign writer Philip Duus who wrote all the names of the drum bearers and girls on the drum on the side.
“It was a good opportunity to redo the drum and just make it a bit more professional,” Mr Rae said.
The larger change, however, came when the Girl on the Drum returned in 2024 after no dancer was available in 2023.
Instead of being carried by three drum bearers, they were now catchers, and the restored drum was put on a platform.
Mr Rae said this was largely due to safety, particularly because the ongoing issue of finding highland dancers had got worse, meaning they had to train more inexperienced girls for the tradition.
“We’ve got to think of the safety of the girls more than anything,” he said.
The tradition only returned in 2024 because his granddaughter Cobi Kaye was willing to give it a go despite her inexperience.
“I was just lucky enough to have a granddaughter at that age where she was willing to learn that dance otherwise we would have had another year without a Girl on the Drum,” Mr Rae said.
It’s one change among many for the Maryborough Highland Gathering which is also seeing a decline in pipe bands.
“In under 10 years we’re not going to have any pipe bands left to come to the gathering,” Mr Rae said.
“Hopefully we’ve still got girls on the drum in 10 years time but it’s getting harder and harder.
“I think it will die out eventually, unfortunately, but hopefully we can keep it going as long as we can.”
What’s the experience like?
While the Girl on the Drum is an iconic sight, most will never know how it feels to perform it.
To join the thirteen who do you’d have to be a girl who is the right size and weight, usually between eight to 10 years old, in the short window a highland dancer is needed.
This means most locals are familiar with the performance that ends the Highland Gathering but not what it’s like to do.
Even the girls themselves, some who spent half a decade on the drum, don’t know what it’s like for the others.
The Maryborough District Advertiser spoke to every Girl on the Drum in its half century history to better understand how it feels to perform on New Year’s Day.
Each dancer’s story begins with a question: would you like to be Girl on the Drum?
While some who agreed were keen to meet the challenge, others said yes before knowing what they had gotten themselves into.
Since the performance’s return after the pandemic the girls on the drum haven’t been highland dancers. This wasn’t the norm for most of the spectacle’s history.
Usually they were competitive highland dancers, like third Girl on the Drum Meletta Dellar who first competed at age six and started dancing on the drum around 10 years old.
“To be asked in the first place was an honour,” she said.
Sixth Girl on the Drum Kate Stevens said she was scouted because of her short height when competing in Stawell.
She said it was an honour her mum would joke about with a family friend whose kids also did highland dancing.
“My mum used to gloat that I was picked as Girl on the Drum,” she said.
But once they were chosen they had to learn a simple dance, the Highland Fling, made difficult when done on a drum high in the air.
Some would practice for months, others just days, depending on when they were chosen.
Usually they would bring the drum home to practice in the lead up to the gathering, but if not they made do, like 10th Girl on the Drum Bessie Penhall.
“Mum made me practice on the big deep freezer. I’d just stand on top of that and do a few practice runs,” she said.
Ms Dellar would practice with the drum on the kitchen floor with newspaper underneath.
“Sometimes when I was dancing my hand would hit the roof,” she said.
Her sister Nyree Thomas (nee Dellar) faced the opposite as fourth Girl on the Drum.
“Dad would put the drum on the kitchen table so you can imagine how short I was because I didn’t hit the ceiling,” she said.
Fifth Girl on the Drum Kellie Tori put the drum on her parent’s bed so it would move like the drum bearers might have.
“It would give me practice with it being wobbly, a bit unsteady, but the bed was far wobblier than it was on the men’s shoulders,” she said.
Before the drum was put on a stand in 2024, the drum bearers did more than hold the girl on top aloft.
Instead they offered reassurance, as Ms Tori remembered.
“They always gave me really positive feedback and encouraging words after I’d done it,” she said.
If one of the girls felt unsafe they could knock on the drum and they’d bring her down.
“They never made me feel like that was the wrong thing to do,” she said.
Eleventh Girl on the Drum, and last to be lifted by the drum bearers, Georgina Brown said she’d practice with them in-between competitions on the day.
“They were just the nicest guys you could come across to do it,” she said.
Coming from competitions, however, meant an auditory shock for the girls.
Second Girl on the Drum Allison Lewington (nee Grogan) said competitions used taped music not the far louder massed pipe bands.
“The first time I practiced on the shoulders, it was inside the pipe band hall, and they all started playing and I was like you’ve got to be kidding me,” she said.
Ms Tori described it as a “sensory overload”.
“Certain aspects of the technique kind of went out the window just because I was focusing on staying secure and staying centred,” she said.
It’s the other side of a familiar sight for locals, one Mrs Thomas said came at the end of an exhausting day for competitive highland dancers.
“They actually used to do [competitions] on the oval, out in the full sun, that was a killer,” she said.
Ms Stevens said getting lifted by the drum bearers was its own challenge even when seated.
“The hardest part was getting up and down ... there was a break in balance,” she said.
“When you were up and it was situated it only moved a little bit. Whereas when they’re moving they’ve got to try and do that evenly,” she said.
Now around 10 feet off the ground the Girl on the Drum shares an eyeline with the grandstand’s crowd.
It’s in that moment Mrs Lewington said everything would stop.
“It’s so quiet you can hear one of your friends at the back of the grandstand clicking keys, and they were,” she said.
The bands would then begin the unusual performance.
“You’re just up there and you do what you do, because the sooner I do it it’ll be done, and then I’m back on the ground again,” Mrs Lewington said.
Ms Penhall, however, said she was soon comfortable high in the air.
“It would always be scary for the first two minutes and then I didn’t really think too much about it,” she said.
Once the dance was over the girls could take a well deserved victory lap which Ms Tori fondly remembered.
“The thing that stays in my mind the most is afterwards and just how excited I felt having done it,” she said.
It’s been a Highland Gathering of reflection for the 13 girls on the drum which Mrs Thomas said left her with a new-found perspective.
“Reflecting back as an adult it’s kind of humbling that you become part of that tradition, become part of what Maryborough is known for,” she said.
Together Mrs Lewington said they’ve done something truly unique.
“I don’t know anything that could or would relate,” she said.
Plover dynasty returns to Girl on the Drum in 2026
The Plover family lay claim to an over decade long stint in the Girl on the Drum’s legacy, a title renewed in 2026, with Addyson Plover’s performance.
Three Plover sisters performed on the drum between 2002 until 2013 through heat, rain, wind, and bouts of poor health.
It’s a legacy that continues to this day as young Addyson takes up the mantle.
Her grandmother, and the sister’s mother, Christine Plover, has trained the Girl on the Drum for almost 25 years.
The fact the spectacle remains after a half-century is in no small part thanks to Christine’s contributions.
But it’s a legacy that begins in one of the darkest times of her life.
When she got the news that her daughter, Chantelle Plover, was being offered Girl on the Drum, Christine had spent almost five months in hospital.
Following a caesarean, and a staph infection in her spinal cord, she got septicemia that left her in hospital for almost five months.
“It virtually just ate the whole disc in my neck,” she said.
It meant months away from her six children, all under nine, including her new baby.
The Girl on the Drum gave her something to look forward to.
“I’m thinking wow there’s light at the end of the tunnel. We’re gonna rally ahead here,” she said.
Christine was discharged from hospital on Christmas Eve, giving her only a week to train Chantelle.
The whole time she still had a PICC line in and wore a neck brace.
“At the gathering I had a hard collar and a drip in my arm. It’s hard to believe,” she said.
“You just look back and think how did I do it, but we just did, you know,” she said.
Chantelle had only started highland dancing three months before her first time on the drum in 2002.
While that may be common now, considering the last two girls on the drum weren’t highland dancers, back then the girls were always competitive dancers.
Despite being short on time, when Christine asked her daughter if she’d get up on the drum the answer came back as yes.
“That was it, she was a goer,” Christine said.
“You need a kid with a bit of go about her.”
Chantelle would go on to perform from 2002 to 2006.
She said what started out as scary soon left her hooked.
“I feel like once you do it once, that’s it, you love it. Even now I’d get up and do it,” she said.
“It’s the thrill of getting lifted up in the air, there’s however many people sitting there watching you, it’s very exciting.”
The success of Chantelle’s performance was also a mental win for Christine.
The determination that carried her through that first gathering continued into her recovery in the months and years to follow.
“I needed to get fit and I needed to get well so I did,” she said.
When Chantelle got too big for the drum, and the next sister in-line was “too chicken”, Lashae Plover took up the challenge.
“I was always one of the kids when I was little to go on the big rides and I wasn’t scared of heights,” she said.
After a day of competitive highland dancing at the gathering, she said there was little time for nerves, only excitement.
“There were a few hours from the competition to the Girl on the Drum and that’s when the anxiety kicked in,” she said.
For Lashae, however, the attention made up for it.
“You felt like a little pop star,” she said.
Lashae would perform from 2007 to 2011 before she had to give Sharni Plover a go.
“Sharni is a giant so I knew she wouldn’t get many years but I think at the time I was very disappointed my time was up,” she said.
Her disappointment, however, became excitement for Sharni after years of watching.
“I’d been waiting for this forever and it was finally my turn to be the star of the show,” she said.
Her height, however, meant she only got two years across 2012 and 2013 feeling like a “celebrity”.
She also nearly missed her final year because of a stint in hospital battling gastro the night before.
“I was adamant that I wanted to still dance on the drum because it was my special thing I was excited for all year,” she said.
While they had Lashae as a backup, Christine said she doesn’t know how Sharni did it.
“She was so dehydrated and so white but she did it,” she said.
“It’s commitment.”
Over a decade on, the Plovers have made their return to the drum with Addyson.
While she’s been practicing at the family home there’s been no shortage of advice nor onlookers according to Christine.
“The first time she got up [on the drum and stand] ... we had probably a hundred cows on the fence line watching her,” she said.
While Addyson may not have been a highland dancer, coming from a time where finding a girl on the drum is harder and harder, she has no shortage of role models.
Lashae said she was giving Addyson advice when she was asked for a demonstration.
Climbing up on the wobbling drum as an adult, Lashae admitted, was scary.
“When I was little I had no fear,” she said.
“I didn’t tell her that I just pretended it was fine.”
Chantelle too has young girls of her own that one day might take their place in the Plover legacy.
“My youngest little girl she was standing up on the drum [at home], in the air mind you, so I’m sure she’ll be up there one day,” she said.
It’s a local legacy that brings the community together every year, but for the Plover family, Christine said it’s a personal one.
“Looking back it was my highlight as a teacher to see my girls and my pupils on the drum,” she said.
“That was my dream as a little girl.”
Extreme weather, close calls
After half a century of Girl on the Drum, no-one has fallen off during the performance, but that’s not to say they haven’t come close.
Until the last couple of years, a young girl would be lifted by three drum bearers, in extreme heat through to wind and rain, to perform the Highland Fling around 10 feet off the ground.
Not one said they fell during the performance, but many said they got close.
While catchers are at the ready to this day their job has been a quiet one at the Highland Gathering’s close.
Beyond the eyes of the public, however, there have been some tumbles and near misses.
When performed on the drum the Highland Fling isn’t done with the turns due to the difficulty.
However, that wasn’t always the case.
In the early years those brave enough to try could, like second Girl on the Drum Allison Lewington (nee Grogan).
Her bad luck, however, was that the drum was at an angle and the wind was blowing the year she tried.
“I couldn’t quite work out why dad was just standing there [close],” she said.
While her dad may have jolted forward, he wasn’t needed that year, as she completed the turns without issue.
The wind would remain a concern for fourth Girl on the Drum Nyree Thomas (nee Dellar).
“Come five o’clock, when the Girl on the Drum would do her thing, it would get windy,” she said.
“Every year I remember the wind picking me up and shifting me.”
While she performed for half a decade, one year the crowd noticed a particularly dramatic gust.
“There was that one year where it did shift me right to the edge and I landed right on the edge of the drum,” she said.
Alongside the crowd her dad, who was a catcher, noticed and jumped forward.
“I think I just stood there until they finished [with] my little heart pounding,” Mrs Thomas said.
It also meant her sister Meletta Dellar’s wishes, who was Girl on the Drum before her, came true.
“I’d be watching her dance hoping she didn’t fall,” she said.
During a practice of her own in years prior she had lost her balance and jumped off the drum.
“Gave [mum] a heart attack,” she said.
Beyond the eyes of the crowd, seventh Girl on the Drum Chantelle Plover did fall a few years into her stint.
“I feel like if I had fallen off the first time I had done it I wouldn’t have done it again,” she said.
“I was well and truly used to it by then.”
She said it was a windy day when they were doing a last minute practice with the drum bearers and catchers behind the grandstand.
Infamously among the Plover family she fell off the drum into the arms of her dad who was a catcher.
Knowing he was there ready to catch her brought Lashae Plover, who followed on from her sister, some comfort.
She said she never fell but would sometimes jump into her dad’s arms for fun.
Instead her challenge was one gathering’s weather which her mum Christine Plover said might have been the worst the performance had seen.
What is usually a hot summer day was met with rain and, just two hours out from the performance, hail.
“They were talking about putting the drum in the grandstand and I was like oh my god,” Christine said.
“My biggest concern was obviously just in case she fell off that drum she’d fall on concrete, it’s not grass.”
But as has always been the case for Girl on the Drum the weather broke right before the performance.
“Low and behold virtually [10 minutes to go] the cloud lifted and it stopped raining and it stopped hailing,” she said.
“We’ve been so lucky.”
The wind returned to challenge eleventh Girl on the Drum Georgina Brown nearly pushing her off during the performance.
“I went forwards to get my balance again and just had to keep going,” she said.
“It scared me for a sec.”
Instead, like all others who stood where she did, the performance went off without issue.
“You want to honour all the past girls and the future ones by doing a really good dance,” she said.
Drum bearers: a foundation of many sorts
As the foundation of the performance and the Girl on the Drum’s confidence, drum bearers played an important role supporting the young dancers across the decades.
The job of the three drum bearers was both to lift the drum during the performance and build trust with the dancer.
While the drum bearers are a thing of the past, since 2024 the drum is put on a platform instead of held, their supportive role continues on through the catchers.
Former Maryborough Highland Society president and drum bearer Andrew Rae said trust between the dancers and the lifters was very important.
It’s particularly vital when the thirteen dancers across five decades described a shared sentiment of nerves leading into their first year on the drum.
Trust was built by getting the girls used to the drum, and its height, at a pace they were comfortable with. At first starting on the ground, then a little higher, before ending on their shoulders.
“Once they’ve done it once they have a lot of trust in you and we have a lot of trust in her as a dancer as well,” Mr Rae said.
“It is a very important part of it.”
While Mr Rae began his stint as drum bearer in 2014 he continued a tradition practiced by Bruce ‘Darky’ Duncan across 40 years and Tom Passalick for 38 years, alongside eleven other drum bearers.
“It was a relief to us and for the girl when it was finished to know that she got through it okay,” Mr Rae said.
“You’d never want to be the first one to have a girl slip on the drum.”
Third Girl on the Drum Meletta Dellar fondly remembered the support of her drum bearers Mr Duncan, Daryl McLeish and Mr Passalick.
They would also go on to carry her sister.
“They always made you feel comfortable and try to get rid of those pre-dance jitters,” she said.
Fifth Girl on the Drum Kellie Tori said the drum bearers helped her feel relaxed with a well-timed joke and careful reassurance.
“I just think of them really fondly still when I look back at that time,” she said.
Many of the same drum bearers supported the Plover girls in their decade long stint from 2002 to 2013.
Ninth Girl on the Drum Sharni Plover said they were able to provide an environment that felt safe.
“We built up this rapport with them over the few years which was really nice,” she said.
“You didn’t really feel that worried because you just knew you had trust in these people.”
While they’re no longer having to stand firm as someone hops around on their shoulders, Mr Rae plans to continue the drum bearer’s legacy of trust as a catcher.
“We won’t let them hit the ground no matter what,” he said.