A valuable and still-working Steinway baby grand piano turned up at Broome tip last week. Local musician Wil Thomas came across 16-year-old Tui Warihana playing the instrument when he arrived to drop off some garden waste.

“Went to the tip today. Found this guy playing this piano on a pile of rubbish,” he posted on Facebook. After a closer look he was “shocked and stupefied” to realise it was a Steinway.

“It was quite surreal. It was like something out of a Tom Waits video clip,” Thomas told the ABC. “This beautiful sound was coming out of this beautiful piano in the tropical hell of the Broom tip.”

Thomas identified the piano – which was missing two legs – as one that had lived for many years in the Sam Male Room at the Cable Beach Club. Thomas phoned Don Bacon, a businessman and pianist, who came to the tip to help rescue the piano.

“We found the lid and pedals nearby,” Thomas wrote on Facebook. “The young guy who was beating the ivories said he didn’t have the room for it, so it was down to us.”