Robert George Hirst (3 September 1955 – January 2026) was an Australian musician associated most with Midnight Oil, one of Australia’s most outstanding bands, and his powerhouse playing of the drums. Many consider his playing was ‘the heartbeat of Midnight Oil’.
Rob was a founding member of the rock band Midnight Oil on drums, percussion and backing vocals (sometimes lead vocals) from the 1970s until the band took a hiatus in 2002. The band resumed performing and recording in 2017.
Midnight Oil were Peter Garrett (vocals, harmonica), Jim Moginie (guitar, keyboard) and Martin Rotsey (guitar). The lineup also included Bones Hillman (bass) and Rob Hirst (drums) until 2020 and 2026 respectively.
Born in Camden, the second child of Peter and Robin, Rob spent the first 7 years of his life on a bush block at Campbelltown in the then bush suburb of ‘Kentlyn’. The experience set him up as preferring the great outdoors for life. His father, after serving in World War Two in New Guinea, became a successful real estate dealer and he described his mother as a poet, capable of wonderful prose.
In 1962 the family moved to Balmoral, to another bush block, and years before the place became the place of merchant bankers. His father, a lifelong swimmer, became a member of the ‘Balmoral Braves’ who would swim year round.
Rob went to primary school with Allan Border at Mosman Primary School before getting a scholarship to Sydney Grammar, which his father and grandfather had both attended as well.
During the late 1950’s and early 1960’s Rob would watch ‘Thank Your Lucky Stars’ which shared clips of all the Mersey beat musicians and later The Who. The Rolling Stones version of ‘Little Red Rooster’ stuck with him.
Rob began drumming along to The Beatles on his family’s carpet with sticks initially and then the kitchen stools, wearing through the vinyl. His older brother Stephen preferred classical music and was proficient on the piano – must have been a noisy home at times. He drummed in his primary school marching band, marching up to Mosman oval.
In senior school, Rob and his mates advertised for a singer to join their new band, Farm. Peter Garrett turned up to the audition, and Midnight Oil was born.
With Rob’s ferocious drumming as the bedrock of their sound, the Oils became one of Australia’s biggest bands, selling millions of albums worldwide.
Throughout his life, Rob's sought peace in the Australian bush, and described himself as 'a middle-aged twitcher' (bird-watcher) and loved his dog.
In an interview with the ABC’s Sarah Kanowski in 2018 he spoke about his mother’s family members suffering from depression and panic attacks and Rob’s assertion ‘’it’s important for families to talk about it. We need to let people know that they are not alone and that help is available’’.
His talented older brother had much of his own career as a musician curtailed by this disease. Rob also learned to manage depression and anxiety attacks through running as exercise or taking long walks through the bush.
He was diagnosed with a cancerous tumour in his right leg during his second year at Sydney Grammar – thankfully benign – as this would become his kickdrum leg. He spent 3 months in the children’s ward at Royal North Shore hospital. When his parents brought him home, as a get well present, they took him into Harry Landis’ music shop in Sydney and bought him a drum kit.
He joined the Cadet Corps band (2 years was compulsory at Sydney Grammar) – he remembers this was during the Vietnam War period and there were several schoolboy conscientious objectors who joined the band. While part of this he learned a lot of military drumming which would be used later on.
‘I use a lot of buzz rolls and paradiddles which I learned there...’’
Around this time he met a Michael Stenning and played gigs around Sydney with a Dixieland jazz band while still in his teens as a member of the ‘Stanley Street Jazz band’ Stanley street ran next to Sydney Grammar. Rob recalled playing at Berry Island in Wollstonecraft, among others.
At the same time he had already met and was playing with fellow Stanley Street Jazz Band player Jim Moginie, whom Rob considered so knowledgeable about music he deemed he was the ‘true musician of Midnight Oil’, not just in the writing and playing but also the production. With Andrew "Bear" James, they played their first public performance at the school hall under the name Schwampy Moose, playing mainly Beatles' covers.
By 1976 the band had changed their name to Farm (*ucking All Right Mate) with Rob as singer from behind the drums – which he once described as ‘horrendous’.
Rob placed an advertisement for a singer to join the trio and said they held auditions in the school hall at Grammar with 3 people turning up and only one clear prospect – ‘this fellow with long blonde hair’ – Peter Garrett – who was two years older than them and had already stared at ANU. Rob recalled his voice may not have bene that great but he had a lot of charisma – they commenced gigs up and down the coast of NSW as ‘FARM’.
The new line up of Peter Garrett (lead vocals), Hirst (drums and vocals), Moginie (guitar, keyboards, backing vocals) and James (bass guitar) were joined soon after by Martin Rotsey initially on bass then back on guitar, and their manager and sixth member, Gary Morris. The band changed their name to Midnight Oil, apparently from drawing the name out of a hat – each member had put in one alternative to ‘FARM’.
Rob recalled one of their early gigs was at the Ryde Youth Dance with ACDC headlining – the members resolved to get out of their ‘satin flares’ costumes then, back into their jeans, and develop their own sound. He said they’d been a bit ordinary prior to then, playing a few originals and the covers their crowds would demand.
Of AccaDacca Rob said:
‘’‘they were amazing, they blew the roof off – and when Bon brought out the bagpipes for ‘Long Way to the Top’… we were this band from the northern beaches and this made us go ‘hmmm’…’’
In June 2014 Manly Art Gallery & Museum’s ‘The Making of Midnight Oil’, developed by MAG&M’s Ross Heathcote in collaboration with Midnight Oil drummer Rob Hirst and with exhibition design by Wendy Osmond, examined the band’s impact on our social and cultural history. Rob Hirst was a constant patron and supporter of Manly Art Gallery & Museum.
As Rob Hirst put it then: ‘The first crowd we ever pulled was in a long-demolished surf-pub called the Royal Antler Hotel. So it’s fitting that our first ever exhibition is in Manly, where some of us still live and make music. It’s a Midnight Oil exhibition, sure. But it’s also the story of a time when music – loud, fast and original – was all that mattered. And about the bands and the beer-halls and the smoky, sweaty, sticky joy of it all.’
Midnight Oil at the Royal Antler. Photo: David Knowles
The Making of Midnight Oil featured stage costumes, posters, previously unseen film, documents, lyric sheets, music industry awards, band instruments, memorabilia and photographs - sourced from public and private collections, including Hirst’s own personal archive.
The clothing included the "sorry suits". Midnight Oil wore these suits with the word "sorry" on them during the closing ceremony of the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000, as part of a campaign to apologise to the stolen generation of Aborigines.
The exhibition showcased the band's passionate commitment to environmental, social and Indigenous rights, and the noisy packed-to-the-rafters era of pub rock.
Midnight Oil’s 1990 New York concert, ‘Black Rain Falls’, was released for the first time digitally and on DVD on Friday June 20th in support of the opening of the exhibition ‘The Making Of Midnight Oil’ at the Manly Art Gallery & Museum on the same day.
On May 30, 1990, Midnight Oil interrupted their North American tour for a “special guerrilla action” outside Exxon Oil headquarters on the crowded Avenue of the Americas in midtown Manhattan. The agitprop event from the back of a flat-bed truck drew more than 10,000 people out of the nearby office buildings and onto the street.
The Oils were responding to one of the worst environmental disasters in US history when nearly 11 million gallons of oil were spilled onto the pristine Alaskan coastline by the Exxon Valdez. Twenty-five years later the effects of the spill on the landscapes and wildlife of southern Alaska are still being felt.
“There are things we think are so important that they have to be said,” lead singer Peter Garrett told a packed international press conference after the performance, “and the best way we could say it was with song. What happened this morning was just another of the things that this band has tried to do for the last decade or so. We want to take some of the issues that are in the songs back onto the streets where they belong.”
With a blistering intensity to their live performances, the band's early music was a distinctive brand of music labelled ‘surf punk’. However, by the early 1980s the key songwriters in the band, Hirst, Moginie and Garrett, had become increasingly interested in the political issues of the day. This had a significant influence on their songwriting and soon spilled over into their live performances as the dynamic and outspoken Garrett used the stage as a platform for the band's views on issues including Aboriginal rights, nuclear disarmament and social justice.
In 1979, James left to be replaced by Peter Gifford. In 1987, after touring the outback and recording the album, Diesel and Dust, Gifford suffered ill health and resigned. New bass player Bones Hillman (formerly of New Zealand band the Swingers) brought a new vocal dimension to the band. Midnight Oil continued to record and tour internationally for a further fifteen years, chalking up a final tally of fourteen albums and two extended plays before lead singer Garrett quit the group in December 2002 to take up a career in politics. The band resumed activity in 2017, including a world tour that year.
Rob has said his passion for the drums turned him into a drummer, permanently, and that when the Oils reformed in 2017 all that muscle memory came back.
See: Oils In The Alice: The Great Circle 2017 World Tour by Dick Clarke
Photo: Dick Clarke
Rob co-wrote at least 16 songs with Midnight Oil members, including: Armistice Day (song), Beds Are Burning, Blue Sky Mine, The Dead Heart, Don't Wanna Be the One, Dreamworld (Midnight Oil song), First Nation (song), Forgotten Years, Gadigal Land, King of the Mountain (Although some people think the song is a reference to Peter Brock and the Bathurst 1000 held at Mount Panorama, drummer Rob Hirst said the song is actually inspired by the footrace up Mount Cooroora and the surrounding natural beauty and unique history of the Noosa hinterland. Mount Cooroora plays host to the King of the Mountain festival. The first run by a local footballer to the top of the mountain occurred in 1958. The Mountain Challenge race began in 1959 and has been run every year since.), Powderworks (Powderworks was released in November 1978 on their eponymous debut album via their own label, Powderworks Records), Put Down That Weapon, Read About It, Sometimes, Truganini, and US Forces.
In the mid-1990s, while Midnight Oil were taking a break, Hirst joined with guitarist Andrew Dickson and Hoodoo Gurus bass guitarist Rick Grossman to form a side project, Ghostwriters. The band released four albums, Ghostwriters (Virgin Records, 1991), Second Skin (Mercury Records, 1996), Fibromoon (self-released, 2000) and Political Animal (SonyBMG Australia, 2007).
In 2000, Hirst joined Backsliders, an Australian blues group formed in 1986 whose members included founding member Dom Turner and harmonica players Brod Smith, Ian Collard and Joe Glover. The line-up with Hirst released six studio albums, one EP and a live DVD.
Turner and Hirst formed another band in 2002, the Angry Tradesmen, with the idea of taking the guitar/drum music of North Mississippi and blending it with the drum/bass music of the 1990s and experimental post-punk rock. Their only album, Beat the House, was released in 2008 and featured studio performances by Midnight Oil's Martin Rotsey. Hirst and Rotsey also play on the track "All Around the World" on Jim Moginie's 2006 solo album Alas Folkloric.
Other musical collaborations included working with Australia's Olympic athletes on a recording commissioned by SOCOG for the Sydney 2000 Olympics, and an unrelated collaboration with former Olympic athlete Paul Greene. Hirst and Greene released an album, In the Stealth of Summer, and a DVD, Hirst and Greene – Live at the Basement.
He also wrote a book, Willie's Bar & Grill, recounting the experiences on the tour Midnight Oil embarked on shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.
In 2010, Hirst, Moginie and Rotsey teamed up with Violent Femmes bass player Brian Ritchie and Hunters & Collectors trumpet player Jack Howard to form a new surf rock band, the Break. Their debut album, Church of the Open Sky, was released on April 16 2010 on the independent Bombora label distributed by MGM. A tour of Australia followed. Their second album, Space Farm, was released on 15 March 2013, again followed by an Australian tour.
In 2015, Hirst collaborated on music with his eldest daughter, Jay O'Shea, of the band O'Shea. Hirst and his girlfriend of then, who went on to become an opera singer, had given Jay for adoption when teenagers and it was through her birth mother that the two eventually reconnected in 2010. The song The Truth Walks Slowly was the second time Hirst had collaborated with his children after previously having his younger two daughters complete backing vocals on his solo album. In 2020 Rob and Jay released ‘The Lost and The Found’ album.
Powerful Owls (2018) was a first time collaboration between drummer/songwriter/singer Rob (Midnight Oil, Backsliders, The Break, Hirst / Sennett) and guitarist/singer/songwriter Lez Karski (The Hippos / Bondi Cigars / Nervous Investors). The five track EP blended bluesy riffs, trippy pop and meaty grooves, courtesy of bassist Al ‘Owl’ Britton (Bondi Cigars/ Dynamic Hepnotics). The session was captured by producer Paul McKercher at Jim Moginie’s Oceanic Studio in Brookvale.
In 1979, Lez Karski had produced Midnight Oil’s Head Injuries, along with the EP Bird Noises the following year. A friendship was forged between Lez and the band which has lasted almost forty years. Lez’s suggestion to write some songs together had also been in the back of Rob’s mind.
The title also gives an insight into his love of local birds:
‘’There’s a family of powerful owls living in the bush near my home. They’re massive, with huge golden eyes and brown flecks over a white body. The young one is particularly beautiful, with a white face and breast and dark eye-patches (hard nights on the hunt?) They never take their eyes off me as I pass underneath their chosen angophora tree, their roost way up high - perfect for spotting a lazy ringtail possum or a tardy flying fox. I always get the impression that if I lingered too long in the winter breeding season, they’d swoop down, tear me apart and carry the pieces up into a limb of their tree. Powerful stuff!’’ – Rob, 2018
When Midnight Oil parked the tour bus for the last time in 2022, Rob Hirst went straight back to doing what he’s always done – writing open-hearted rock songs that grapple with our place and times. Lifelong friend Jim Moginie took leave from his other musical projects to produce and play on four of these new compositions at his studio, Oceanic. The pair brought in one of Australia’s leading jazz and studio drummers, Hamish Stuart, to allow Rob to focus fully on guitar and vocals. Playing live together, the trio created the backbone of a new EP.
Then more old friends made some key cameos. Oils producer Warne Livesey mixed the tracks and added some extra bass. Jack Howard from Hunters & Collectors injected some brass while William Crighton – who toured as the Oils special guest – contributed backing vocals.
In October 2025 Rob Hirst was parting ways with a truly iconic piece of music history. Purchased new for the recording of Head Injuries, his Ludwig drum kit became the heartbeat of the Oils’ live shows — a centrepiece on stages across the world from 1979 right through to the band’s final tour in 2022.
Rob was auctioning the kit with all proceeds donated to two causes close to his heart: the NT’s “Fix-Em-Up Truck Campaign”, providing gear, repairs and support for remote musicians in the NT and Support Act, the lifeline for Australian music workers in need. The auction raised thousands.
Tributes have been continuous since Australians heard Rob Hirst lost his battle with pancreatic cancer.
He was a musician’s musician and one of the greatest drummers in the history of Australian music – he was part of the lifetime’s soundtrack for many of us. Whether you saw the Oils at the Royal Antler at Narrabeen or at Manly Flicks, alongside peer bands such as the Dynamic Hepnotics, Flowers, INXS and D-Minor and the Discords, or at many of the Oils shows since then, Rob was a mate in the truest sense - generous with his time, loved by so many, and part of songs that shaped this country’s soundtrack.
Midnight Oil at Manly Flicks, circa 1978. Photo: David Knowles
As the first full Issue of Pittwater Online comes out for 2026, the Australia Day Honours Issue, the list of local honourees includes, just a few days late:
Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the General Division
The late Mr Robert George Hirst, formerly of Manly, Balmoral Beach and Byron Bay
For significant service to the performing arts through music.
Midnight Oil
- Drummer and Percussionist, 1976-2026.
- Chief Songwriter, 1976-2026.
- Musician and Collaborator, 31 albums, 1978-2022.
- Co-Founding Member, 1976.
Backsliders
- Drummer and Percussionist, 2000-2026.
- Musician and Collaborator, six albums, 2002-2020.
- Member, 2000-2026.
O’Shea
- Drummer and Percussionist, 2015-2024.
- Musician and Collaborator, one album, 2020.
The Break
- Drummer and Percussionist, 2010-2013.
- Musician and Collaborator, two albums, 2010-2013.
- Founding Member, 2010.
Angry Tradesmen
- Drummer and Percussionist, 2002-2008.
- Musician and Collaborator, one album, 2008.
- Founding Member, 2002.
Ghostwriters
- Drummer and Percussionist, 1990-2007.
- Musician and Collaborator, four albums, 1991-2007.
- Founding Member, 1990.
Music
- Musician and Collaborator, One Voice, The Hillmans, 2023.
- Musician and Collaborator, Powerful Owl, 2018.
- Musician and Collaborator, The Sun Becomes The Sea, 2014.
- Former Musician and Collaborator, Hirst and Sennett.
- Former Musician and Collaborator, Hirst and Greene.
- Former Fundraiser, Yodifee House Cambodia.
Community
- Former Patron, Green Music Australia.
- Ambassador, The Mirabel Foundation, 2024.
- Member, Australasian Performing Right Association, 1978-2026.
Publications
- Documentary Guest, Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line, Beyond Entertainment, 2024.
- Guest, Rob Hirst: From sleeping on beaches to drumming with Midnight Oil, Songs and Stories Podcast, The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2023.
- Guest, Midnight Oil’s Rob Hirst, Conversations Podcast, The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2019.
- Author, Willie’s Bar and Grill, Momentum, 2014.
Awards and Recognition include:
- Co-Winner, Song of the Year, Gadigal Land, Midnight Oil, Australasian Performing Rights Association, 2021.
- Co-Winner, Gold Medal for Human Rights, Midnight Oil, Sydney Peace Foundation, 2020.
- Co-Winner, Ted Albert Award for Outstanding Services to Australian Music, Midnight Oil, Australasian Performing Rights Association, 2018.
- Co-Winner, Video of the Year, The Truth Walks Slowly (In The Country Side), O’Shea, The Country Music Awards of Australia, 2017.
- Co-Winner, Starvation Box, Backsliders, iTunes Best Blues and Roots Album, 2011.
- Co-Winner, Midnight Oil, ARIA Hall of Fame, 2006.
- Co-Winner, Midnight Oil, 11 ARIA Awards, 1988-2004.
- Co-Winner, Hanoi, Best Blues and Roots Album, Backsliders, 2002.
- Co-Winner, Gold Award, Beds Are Burning, Midnight Oil, Australasian Performing Rights Association, 1991.
- Co-Winner, International Viewer’s Choice MTV Award Australia, Blue Sky Mine, Midnight Oil, MTV Awards United States, 1990.
Rob was also an activist – for the environment, for speaking honestly, for First Nations peoples, for wildlife, for social justice. On their very final tour, the Oils collaborated with Greenpeace and others in staging a spectacular intervention against Woodside Energy’s climate-wrecking gas expansion plans.
This community send love to his family, his bandmates, and everyone who loved him.
His family and bandmates have stated:
“After fighting heroically for almost three years, Rob is now free of pain – ‘a glimmer of tiny light in the wilderness’. He died peacefully, surrounded by loved ones. The family asks that anyone wanting to honour Rob donate to @pankind_australia or @supportact.“