Updated January 20, 2026 — 8:34pm,first published 5:38pm
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Midnight Oil’s frontman Peter Garrett has joined a growing chorus of music giants paying tribute to Rob Hirst, the Oils’ drummer who has died at the age of 70.
Hirst had been fighting advanced pancreatic cancer. In a post to their Facebook page, the band said he died peacefully, “surrounded by loved ones”.
“After fighting heroically for almost three years, Rob is now free of pain – ‘a glimmer of tiny light in the wilderness’,” said Garrett in a statement repeated on the band’s Facebook page.
“We are shattered and grieving the loss of our brother Rob. For now there are no words, but there will always be songs.”
Tributes have begun flowing from fellow rock royalty, with Jimmy Barnes saying on social media: “Rob Hirst has had a massive impact on Australian culture. He was the engine driving one of the greatest live bands of all time. RIP, dear Rob. You are irreplaceable.”
Dom Turner, the blues guitarist with whom Hirst played in The Backsliders, said he was devastated at “the passing of my musical brother”.
“Rob had incredible musicality, intelligence, boundless physical and creative energy, a fantastic sense of humour and a passion for life. I am honoured and blessed to have had over 20 years of adventures with Rob.”
Hirst was one of the founding members of the seminal Australian band that formed in the 1970s and was led by frontman Peter Garrett. The Oils became famous around the world with hits including Power and the Passion (1982), Beds Are Burning (1987) and Blue Sky Mine (1990).
Hirst co-wrote the latter two of these hits and many others, cementing the band’s global reputation as politically aware rock stars.
Hirst was diagnosed with stage three pancreatic cancer in 2023, six months after the last ever Oils gig at Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion.
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In an interview with this masthead in November, Hirst spoke of selling his beloved drum kit for $90,000 – bought by Oils fans, as it turned out, who donated it to the Australian Music Vault in Melbourne.
The battered black Ludwig kit, which Hirst played while performing with the Oils from 1979 until 2022, sold for $90,000 at auction – $80,000 above reserve – thanks to the fundraising clout of “rusted-on fans” known as the Powderworkers.
“I can’t really thrash the drums any more,” Hirst said at the time.
He was “hanging in there”, he reported, in an upbeat way. “I’m looking at the bush and the jacarandas are all out. It’s a lovely time of year.”
Musician and journalist Sean Sennett remembered Hirst as a lovely friend and curious man.
Sennett met Hirst at a songwriters’ workshop at Mount Macedon in the ’90s. They wrote a song together, but it took them 15 years to record it because of how well they got on.
Midnight Oil drummer Rob Hirst has died at the age of 70.Robert Hambling
“I think we just got waylaid by great conversation. We used to chat all the time. He would want to know about my kids, we’d talk about music, books, the politics of the day, and every conversation I had I’d always get a laugh out of him,” Sennett said.
Sennett said Hirst would push him out of his comfort zone, always wanting to walk to the lighthouse at Byron Bay instead of driving there. His active streak continued even as he underwent cancer treatment and his condition became terminal.
Hirst during his Midnight Oil days.Fairfax Media
“I remember the day that I heard about [his diagnosis], I was devastated,” Sennett said. “You hear how quickly people pass away from pancreatic cancer, but he had such a will to live. And I said to him last Thursday, ‘Rob, you’ve made well people look bad!’ He’d be out there doing his garden or writing songs.”
Hirst, an accomplished singer and songwriter in his own right, recently released the EP A Hundred Years or More, with guitarist Jim Moginie, his former schoolmate and Oils colleague, and drummer Hamish Stuart.
On the EP, Hirst plays acoustic guitar, his songs drenched in psychedelic sunshine and melody. “I realise it’s quite an existentialist bunch of songs, with titles like Are We There Yet? and A Hundred Years or More,” he told this masthead late last year.
“I suppose I’ve been thinking about lifespan and longevity – legacy, even. And, of course, that comes out in the songs.”
Sennett said he was glad that Hirst’s achievements with Midnight Oil – as a songwriter and vocalist as well as a drummer – we were recognised in his lifetime.
“Everybody knew his voice from those massive choruses – the “do do do” on The Dead Heart, or Kosciuszko. I think Midnight Oil fans were aware that he and Jim [Moginie, guitarist] wrote so many songs.
“I mean geez, what a drummer. I introduced him to Max Weinberg from Bruce Springsteen’s band. Max is one of the great drummers in rock, and he saw Rob and went, ‘You’re a great drummer’. Even Eddie Vedder [of Pearl Jam] mentioned to me he thought Rob was amazing.”
Hirst attended Mosman Primary School in Sydney, where he was a prefect in 1967 along with cricketer Allan Border and actor Tom Burlinson.
In his 2015 book Big Blue Sky, Garrett said he joined the band after seeing an ad in The Sydney Morning Herald that Hirst and Moginie had placed looking for a lead singer, before auditions were held in November 1973.
Hirst is survived by his wife, Lesley Holland, and his daughters Lexi, Ella and Jay.
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