The first incredible thing about Rob Hirst’s drum kit is how new it looks. Glistening in the dramatic half-light of the Encore! exhibition at Arts Centre Melbourne, this is the rig that powered Midnight Oil from their Head Injuries era of 1979 to their last shows of 2022.
The black Ludwig kit, “overturned in trucks, thrown off risers, drenched in water and Gatorade”, as Hirst told us soon before his death in January – not to mention thrashed by its owner through hundreds of gigs – still gleams like a million dollars.
The second incredible thing is that it’s ours: donated to the Australian Performing Arts Collection after a fundraising operation by Midnight Oil’s formidable fan club, the Powderworkers.
“I thought it’d be such a shame to see this in someone’s shed gathering dust,” Powderworker Matt Yau said ahead of Tuesday night’s gathering of family, friends and musicians, drawn together to honour the fans’ achievement and to launch World Is Almost at Peace, Hirst’s posthumous book of lyrics, photos and stories.
“I think a lot of people who go visit it, and especially those who contributed, are extremely proud that they’ve done it.”
Hirst, by then too ill to play it, approached Yau last year to help auction the kit for charity, floating a reserve of $10,000. Mobilising the Powderworkers led to a winning bid of $77,500. Further donations brought the total to $90,000, now divided equally between Support Act and MusicNT’s Fix ’Em Up Truck campaign.
For Hirst’s wife, Lesley, and daughter Lex, the fans’ generosity reflects a relationship that has grown well beyond the stage.
“We’ve always been rather in awe of the fan response to Dad’s music,” Lex said. “To have a group that’s as dedicated and thoughtful as the Powderworkers is kind of remarkable.”
“I love that they have now friends all around the world, other Powderworkers, and they’re an extraordinary collection of people,” Lesley added.
Hosted by radio broadcaster Tracee Hutchison, Tuesday night’s event brought together musicians including Jim Moginie (a founding member of Midnight Oil), Ash Naylor, Jack Howard, Rick Grossman, Greg Arnold and Hannah Crofts to celebrate Hirst’s legacy with Midnight Oil, Ghostwriters and myriad other projects.
“He worked all the time. He never stopped,” Lesley said.
For Howard, the Hunters and Collectors member who played trumpet and percussion on the Oils’ 2017 world tour, the stillness of a museum display is some distance from the experience of standing metres from the drummer at work.
“He’s very on top of the beat and pushing all the time, not speeding up, but just pushing,” he said. “There’s lots of eye contact … I’d pretty much never take my eyes off him.”
On a panel beside the kit, Hirst’s longtime bandmate Moginie remembers the man whose drum solo on Power and the Passion would command attention on stage and off every night.
“But it was in the writing of so many songs with him where the gold lies for me. He was collegiate and charming, always ready with a smile, a quip and a ‘well done, you’, and you always felt like you were with the smartest man in the room and the best band in the world.”
That quieter working life is the book’s focus. Lex, publishing director at Pantera Press, encouraged her father to write more of the stories surrounding the songs. Returning to the manuscript a couple of months after his death, she found herself laughing at his familiar voice and turns of phrase.
“It felt like a big task that Dad handed over to us that we wanted to do justice to … He’s got such a strong character that comes across.”
Photographers opened their archives, giving the family access to images they had never seen. The selection deliberately reaches beyond the spectacular drummer to the songwriter and his many musical accomplices.
“Dad was very purposeful with everything that he did,” Lex said. That sense of purpose extended to what he hoped his children would carry into their own work: “just really thinking about why you’re doing something and trying to hold true to your values throughout all of it.”
Lex’s five-year-old son, Marlon, meanwhile, is also still learning from his famous grandfather’s example. After recently watching footage of his Power and the Passion solo, he had one question. “He played a water tank?”
“I was like, oh gosh,” Lex said, “we’ve not been talking enough about the drumming side. We’ve just been talking about the grandfather side.”
The whereabouts of the infamous stage accessory, salvaged on the Oils’ Blackfella/ Whitefella tour of ’86 and subsequently hauled around the world, is a mystery to the family, although Lesley believes it’s somewhere safe.
“Possibly with the [stuffed] dingo that was also on stage. They’re somewhere in storage, waiting for something to happen, I guess.”
The tank is unlikely to rust on the Powderworkers’ watch.
“It’s certainly something we’d like to see reunited with the drum kit someday,” Matt Yau said. “It’s the missing piece of the puzzle.”
World Is Almost at Peace is out now through Pantera Press. The Encore! exhibition – 50 objects spanning 50 years of the Australian Performing Arts Collection – is at Hamer Hall until May.
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