Rob Hirst's family and friends help finish book honouring Midnight Oil songwriter

There are drummers, and then there was Rob Hirst. 

Hitting the drums (and water tank) with precision and force, Hirst was not only the percussive motor driving Midnight Oil, but also the band's key songwriter with his beautiful high vocal harmonies.

His death from pancreatic cancer in January triggered an outpouring of grief around Australia and the world for the loss of a truly one-of-a-kind musician.

About a month after he died, his daughter Lex Hirst took on a difficult but rewarding project to finish the book her dad had been working on prior to his death.

Rob had spent the previous two years racing against cancer to complete World is Almost at Peace: A Lifetime of Songwriting for Midnight Oil and More.

He was about 85 per cent done when he died. 

"I went back to work about a month after Dad died and just did a deep dive straight into this project," Lex said.

"It was amazing actually — I did sit at my desk and cry most days, but in a really cathartic way.

"I had this fear of losing his voice or losing these small parts of him, and then to sit down and read the document from beginning to end, his voice is so well captured.

"It was actually a really helpful thing for me at that particular moment of grieving."

World is Almost at Peace is a journey through Rob's life as a songwriter, moving track by track through every completed and recorded song in his back catalogue.

It takes readers from his first stumbling attempts as a lyricist, through his contributions to Midnight Oil's socially conscious landmark tracks such as Beds Are Burning and Read About It, and on to his other myriad projects, such as with the bands Ghostwriters and Backsliders.

"It opens in the foreword with a little bit that says, 'A confession — some of these early songs were written or co-written by an ambitious Australian teenager with little or no real-world experience. They read like it,'" Lex laughed.

"Going from that through to the politicisation of [Midnight Oil] ... you see the shifts.

"And then you go through to some of the more personal songs, and then the last album that he worked on is his most personal ... because he wrote it while he was sick and someone coming to terms with the end of their life as well. 

"That arc I found really interesting to work through."

Spurred on by his wife Lesley Holland, Rob began the project in the knowledge he was not long for the world.

"He was so passionate about getting this out — my dad, he loved to work," Lex said.

"This book was a way, I think, for him to continue to process what it meant to be a songwriter over an entire lifetime.

"I think also because [songwriting] was the last element of music that he was really always able to engage with. Even after he got sick, he was constantly writing and creating, but he couldn't really do a huge amount on the drums. 

"So I do think ... part of the reason [for the book] is him claiming his identity as a writer, probably first and foremost.

"We were very careful to stick to his brief, which was he didn't want it to be a drumming book."

With help from Rob's family, friends, and fellow musicians, Lex said they were able to fill in the gaps her dad had left in the manuscript.

Amid his own anecdotes and some words from his many collaborators, World is Almost at Peace sees the Midnight Oil drummer/singer break down his songwriting to a level rarely seen in these types of books.

"It has the songs chronologically in there and then there are notes along the way and artefacts, but he's also broken down who wrote individual lines of songs," she explained.

"So they're colour-coded differently [so you can tell, for example] in Midnight Oil, whether it was him or Jim [Moginie] or Pete [Garrett] who wrote the individual rhyme, line or even word."

World is Almost at Peace ends with Rob's final song, An Upwelling, which is the only song in the book that was never recorded.

"He was writing it still when he died, and he sort of would sing bits to us," Lex said. 

"He's actually left chords alongside it, because he likes the idea that someone else would take it and take it out into the world."

The book, she said, is a neat summary of her dad's career.

"This book was created very much, I think, with an idea that, yeah, this is what he was leaving for us all."