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A Sydney museum has passed up a chance to bid for and display Midnight Oil drummer and songwriter Rob Hirst’s drum kit, acquired at a charity auction by a fan club for $77,500.
The important piece of Australian rock memorabilia is instead headed for Melbourne’s Australian Music Vault after the Powerhouse Museum said the “timing did not align with our acquisition processes on this occasion”.
Rob Hirst of Midnight Oil at the drum kit.
Sydney-based Hirst parted with the kit he used from 1979 to the band’s 2022 farewell concert due to his battle with pancreatic cancer. Money raised is going towards First Nations musicians and support for band crew who have fallen on hard times.
Fan group Powderworkers purchased it on Monday after emailing a group of institutions asking for potentially matching donations. The Australian Music Vault invited Matthew Yau, who spearheaded the campaign, to talk about its potential display.
“That motivated me to round up the pledges from $20 to $5000 from all around the world,” Yau said. “It’s a fantastic outcome. I would have been happy if it was in my house, but I couldn’t keep it to myself.
“Rather than gathering dust in someone’s shed, we wanted it to be appreciated by all, not one individual. Rob Hirst is happy, and the Oils are happy. I’m just glad that it is in public hands and I wouldn’t have cared where it was – in Perth, Brisbane, Broom or wherever – as long as the charities, Support Act and Music NT, get maximum dollar.”
But internal Powerhouse correspondence from the museum’s senior collection curator, Roger Leong, quoted by ABC Radio on Wednesday, said the drum kit did not fit with the museum’s current collection priorities.
The decision was made even though Midnight Oil was a Sydney band, and the drum kit was designated a highly significant piece of movable cultural heritage that belonged in NSW.
The museum’s current music-related programs are directed at young performers from multicultural communities in western Sydney, at the virtual exclusion of the broader Australian rock music scene.
The decision raises questions about the priorities of the museum and comes a year after the demolition of the childhood home of AC/DC’s Angus and Malcolm Young in Burwood.
Public Service Association assistant secretary Troy Wright said the union had been tempted to raise the alarm about the museum’s cultural drift with the Minns government for more than a year now.
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The Powerhouse holds the drum head to what is probably the same Ludwig kit, donated to the museum by Hirst and which bears the band’s name styled in the same lettering as the cover of Midnight Oil’s 1987 album Diesel and Dust.
The drum kit had been bought from a Turramurra music store in Sydney’s north in 1979 ahead of the recording of the band’s second album Head Injuries.
The museum also holds the Doc Martens worn by Hirst, as well as the sleeveless cotton jacket Hirst purchased at Chatswood disposal store and “bastardised” by ripping off the sleeves and dyeing it blue.
Powerhouse said it had a long history of collecting and presenting Australia’s music history, including the artefacts, object and archives associated with iconic Australian artists.
“We were only recently alerted to auction, and unfortunately the timing did not align with our acquisition processes on this occasion,” it said.
“Powerhouse acknowledges how much Midnight Oil is embedded into the identity of Australian music and if the drum kit formerly used by Rob Hirst were offered to us as a donation, we would be honoured to accept it.”
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