Late Midnight Oil Co-Founder Recognised For Lifetime Service To Australian Music And Culture
by Paul Cashmere
Rob Hirst has been posthumously awarded the Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the General Division as part of the 2026 Australia Day Honours List, recognising his significant service to the performing arts through music. The honour acknowledges a career that reshaped Australian rock, amplified social justice through song and helped project an unmistakably Australian voice onto the global stage.
Hirst, born Robert George Hirst, died in January 2026 aged 70 following an almost three year battle with pancreatic cancer. His passing marked the end of one of the most influential creative lives in Australian music, a career defined not only by endurance and innovation but by a deep moral compass that guided both his art and activism.
Best known as a co-founding member, drummer and a chief songwriter of Midnight Oil, Hirst joined the band in 1976 and remained at its rhythmic and creative core for more than four decades. Alongside long time collaborator Jim Moginie, Hirst formed the engine room of Midnight Oil’s songwriting, crafting music that confronted environmental destruction, Indigenous injustice, nuclear disarmament and corporate power with clarity and urgency.
Emerging from Sydney’s northern beaches, Hirst’s drumming style became inseparable from Midnight Oil’s identity. His physical, relentless approach, whether behind a traditional kit or famously striking a steel water tank during live performances of The Power And The Passion, gave the band a visceral intensity that set them apart from their peers. That sound carried Midnight Oil from suburban halls to the world’s largest stages, culminating in international success with albums such as Diesel And Dust.
While Peter Garrett became the band’s most visible spokesperson, Hirst’s influence was embedded in the architecture of the songs themselves. His lyrical contributions helped frame Midnight Oil’s political stance with nuance and authenticity, ensuring the message was inseparable from the music. His backing vocals, and occasional lead turns on tracks such as Kosciusko, further underscored his versatility as a musician.
The Order of Australia also recognises the extraordinary breadth of Hirst’s work beyond Midnight Oil. Across a career spanning more than 30 albums between 1978 and 2022, he was a prolific collaborator and founding member of multiple projects, including Ghostwriters, Backsliders, The Angry Tradesmen and The Break. Through these bands, Hirst explored blues, surf rock, roots music and experimental forms, consistently challenging himself while mentoring and elevating fellow musicians.
From 2000 onwards, Hirst was a central figure in Backsliders, contributing to six albums that earned critical acclaim within Australia’s blues and roots community. With Ghostwriters, formed in 1990, he released four albums that blended alternative rock with political and personal themes. Later projects such as The Break reunited him with Midnight Oil bandmates Jim Moginie and Martin Rotsey, reaffirming creative bonds forged in the 1970s.
Family became an increasingly important part of Hirst’s musical life in later years. He collaborated with his daughter Jay O’Shea on the album Crashing The Same Car Twice in 2020, a deeply personal project following their reunion after decades apart. He also worked musically with daughters Gabriella and Lex, on the EP A Hundred Years Or More released in 2025, one of his final recordings.
Beyond music, Hirst was a committed advocate for environmental and social causes. He served as Patron of Green Music Australia, was an Ambassador for The Mirabel Foundation and remained a long standing member of the Australasian Performing Right Association since 1978. His activism was never performative, it was lived daily, from fundraising efforts to his enduring connection with the ocean and natural environment around Manly, where he swam regularly even during illness.
Hirst was also an author and commentator, offering insight into the life of a touring musician through his book Willie’s Bar And Grill, which chronicled Midnight Oil’s 2001 United States tour in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. In his later years, he appeared in documentaries and podcasts reflecting on a life spent balancing art, conscience and community.
The Australia Day 2026 honour comes just days after Noise11 reported on Hirst’s death, marking a poignant recognition of his contribution at a national level. His awards over the years include induction into the ARIA Hall Of Fame with Midnight Oil, multiple ARIA Awards, the Ted Albert Award for Outstanding Services to Australian Music, the Sydney Peace Foundation Gold Medal For Human Rights and APRA Song Of The Year for Gadigal Land.
Rob Hirst is survived by his wife Lesley Holland and his daughters Gabriella, Lex and Jay. His legacy endures in the songs that continue to educate, provoke and inspire, and in the example he set of what it means to use music as a force for lasting change.
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