Midnight Oil’s Rob Hirst’s deeply personal tribute to the lost generation of DIY dads

Midnight Oil legend Rob Hirst has revealed the deeply personal story behind his new music.

Even after 50 years of experience creating some of the greatest rock songs of his generation, Rob Hirst still suffers from the fear his new stuff is “just total baloney.”

Almost a year after they played their final gig at Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion, Midnight Oil’s co-founders Hirst and Jim Moginie have joined forces on Red Continent, an EP brimming with songs perfectly timed to join the national conversation on climate change, the treatment of whistleblowers and First Nations peoples.

Hirst has surprisingly handed over the sticks to revered in-demand jazz and session drummer Hamish Stuart, with the three musicians credited as the “band” behind the EP.

He credits the “gentle bedside manner” of Moginie, his creative foil since 1972 when the pair started their band Farm which would morph into the Oils, for bringing the new songs to life.

Jim Moginie, Hamish Stuart and Rob Hirst release new music this week. Picture: Robert Hambling / Supplied

“Songwriters are really thin-skinned; when you write a new song, you’re in trepidation that it’s just total baloney,” Hirst said.

“But if you’ve got someone who steers you like Jim does, gently towards something much better, softly, softly, as he has always done with me, it’s so much easier.”

As Hirst, Moginie and Stuart release their EP, the Oils frontman Peter Garrett has also reignited his solo career. which kicked off in 2016 with the A Version of Now record.

His first gig with his Alter Egos band, which features Oils guitarist Martin Rotsey, will be at the Clearly Festival in Kiama, NSW, on November 11, followed by an Always Live show at Wangaratta, Victoria, on November 29 and Bluesfest in Byron Bay next Easter.

Hirst has no plans as yet to take his new music out on tour.

Oils frontman Peter Garrett and guitarist Martin Rotsey hit the road in November. Picture: Getty.

He said these songs may have ended up on a new Oils album had the band continued beyond their Resist album and farewell tour last year.

The title track Red Continent had been “buzzing” in Hirst’s head for several years but it’s compelling lyric “how do you fight a fire, when you’re running for your life?” came from the horrific experiences of those caught in the Black Summer blazes of 2019 and 2020.

“It’s frightening, after what has happened in Canada and Greece, what we’re facing now. It’s not something in the future, or fiction. It’s happening right now and we’ve got to wake up,” he said.

The EP’s closing track The Strongest Memory addresses the “raw deal”, the risk to reputation, health and liberty, endured by whistleblowers in Australia in recent times including former intelligence officer Witness K and his lawyer Bernard Collaery.

The pair endured lengthy proceedings after being charged over their role in exposing a 2004 espionage mission against Australia’s ally East Timor during critical oil and gas negotiations.

And No Longer Shadows celebrates the native title victory of Eddie Mabo in the year of the Voice to Parliament.

The most personal song in the new collection is Little Bits Of Wire for his late father Peter, a model of his “Silent Generation”, the children of the Depression era who were sent to World War II and returned to be stoically self-reliant.

The song is a companion piece for Someone Scared, which Hirst released in 2014 about his mother’s lifelong battle against depression, which tragically ended with her taking her life in 2012.

“Little Bits of Wire is about dad and the men of his generation, and many of them were servicemen who went in the final years of the war to fight the Japanese and who came back and would never talk about anything that happened when they were so young. We never got anything out of Dad,” Hirst said.

“But the other thing about that marvellous generation was that they were always self-reliant and resilient, and they would never hire a tradesman but turn themselves into sparkies and chippies and plumbers.

“If anything went wrong with the house, the would just cut another bit of wire and fix it. After we sold the (family home) and took all the paintings and everything down off the walls, all the cracks and everything were held together with these bits of wire.”

While the Oils were ahead of the Voice conversation, touring with the Uluru Statement From The Heart as their backdrop for their Makaratta Project album in 2020, Hirst said the band were considering how to support the Yes campaign ahead of the October 14 referendum.

The Oils played their farewell concert at the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney on October 3 last year. Picture: Don Arnold/WireImage.

His personal contribution to swaying those on the fence comes during his regular “table of wisdom” coffee meetings with friends and acquaintances at a cafe in Byron Bay where he now spends most of his time.

“It takes me out of my comfort zone because there are friends up there who like Peter Dutton and are saying they will vote no,” he said.

“So we have these ferocious arguments over double-shot lattes and I think it’s good to have those conversations with people who don’t agree with everything you say.

“I think it’s clear after all these years where we stand on this and we’re hoping like hell (the Voice) happens.”

Red Continent EP by Hirst, Moginie & Stuart is out now.