Marie Bashir and Rob Hirst
NSW’s first female Governor and Midnight Oil’s songwriting drummer have some great values in common, writes Doctor Jeff McMullen.
YESTERDAY. A single word spoken with emotion means the world to everyone who shares the love of music. This is especially so after major losses.
likewise day We lost Dame Marie Bashir I thought of 95-year-old Australian singer Rob Hirst’s 70-year-old passionate beliefs in anything that could unite our humanity.
Growing up in the Riverina town of Narrandera, New South Wales’ first female Governor may well have been a classical violinist. He later studied at the Conservatory of Music, just a short walk from Government House, which he would conduct with grace and courtesy for thirteen and a half years.
Along with a love of music, Marie’s extended family of Lebanese descent also included an equally strong tradition: becoming a doctor allowed one to serve others. Marie told me that this belief inspired her academic acumen, her mastery of psychiatry, and the empathy she brought to an extraordinary life of public service.
Marie brought significant change to the New South Wales healthcare system. She helped create a mental health focus on the intergenerational trauma experienced by Aboriginal families, particularly after their children were taken into state institutions.
In a soft, soothing tone, he reiterated to each of us with experience in this field that humans have extraordinary resilience. He insisted that the key to healing was to listen deeply to each other.
It was not only his scientific knowledge that shaped his belief in people and his endless optimism. Marie Bashir believed this stemmed from her time growing up in an Australian outback town. This land contained us all. As Aboriginal people understood, we were only here for a short time and it was best to find the good in others.
Rob Hirst was also born in the Camden area of south-west Sydney with a sense of space and open skies.
Like Marie Bashir, Rob had a lifelong affinity for this beautiful country. He loved the stunning coastlines and the quiet of the desert. He found a way to express this through words and music. The search for a natural balance was a lifelong quest.
Like his early teenage musical friends, guitarist Jim Moginie and bassist Andrew James, Rob grew up listening to songs and feeling the sense of freedom created by the Beatles.
The high school band Schwampy Moose initially performed Beatles hits. When the boys became men and went to college, they changed the band’s name to Farm, short for ‘Fucking All Right Mate’. What can I say? No, yes! They loved a good laugh.
Rob’s story: In 1975, the band was still searching for another voice, a frontman to light the fire. So, they put up an ad Sydney Morning Herald. Peter Garrett took the job and with a name change, Midnight Oil was on its way.
Throughout, Rob’s drumming was the powerful, pounding pulse of this highly political rock and roll band. Watch the drumsticks toss around. There is an engine room.
The man was torn. He performed legendary solos in sweaty tank tops; especially the solo played right in the middle of the stage, next to a corrugated iron rain tank.
These sounds and Garret’s wild performances are calculated to hook viewers into serious trouble.
If you listen to Midnight Oil’s long playlist of greatest hits spanning 13 studio albums spanning nearly half a century, you’ll see Rob Hirst’s treasure trove of songwriting credits. This is why many musicians praise his writing as well as his playing.
Much later would come Rob’s book about his touring life, collaborations with a host of other brilliant musicians, and an always equally high-energy commitment to progressive causes.
Rob’s interests, like those of Peter Garret and others at Midnight Oil, included passionate, conscious environmentalism, opposition to destructive mining, and the need to reduce the world’s nuclear weapons arsenals.
‘Beds on Fire‘ The 1987 song, which made the band internationally famous, is much more than a ‘protest song’. There is a surprising sense of urgency in the call for a national reckoning over Australia’s treatment of First Peoples.
Ironically, ‘The Beds Are Burning’ helped inform the world about Aboriginal land rights and the removal of children from their families. But the call for Aboriginal people to be recognized and genuinely heard was miserably rejected in a Voice referendum here at home.
This sense of injustice against Aboriginal people was one of Marie Bashir’s greatest passions, both as Chancellor of the University of Sydney and as Governor of NSW.
When a young Aboriginal university student, Jack Manning Bancroft, was encouraged by his mother, artist Bronwyn Bancroft, to approach the Chancellor for help with a mentoring scheme to improve Aboriginal education, Marie Bashir opened the doors to the University of Sydney.
Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME) has enabled thousands of college students here and abroad to meet with high school kids and mentor them on campus.
In 2007, Jack Manning Bancroft was so fed up with fighting red tape to help Aboriginal students that he was about to give up on the idea before he met Marie Bashir.
He wrote:
‘When I walked in this beautiful lady gave a very big smile and hug and said: ‘Now Jack dear, tell me what you dream of.
‘I told him and he said ‘doesn’t that sound wonderful?’ A month or two later we signed our first university contract and this evolved into a mentoring model across Australia and the world…’
This isn’t the only act of attentive listening and genuine kindness that demonstrates Marie Bashir’s ability to empathize.
During his occupation of Sydney’s grand old Government House, his drivers told many delightful stories. This Governor would ask them to stop the car, pull over, and attend to a man passed out drunk by the gutter. On more than one occasion, his trusted aides watched him hug strangers at homeless shelters. I saw him kiss the cheeks of veterans, including those from the now forgotten frontier wars.
Prime Minister at that time Kevin Rudd After delivering a National Apology to the Stolen Generations in the Federal Parliament in Canberra on 13 February 2008, Governor Bashir chose to sit quietly with the Aboriginal mob in Redfern.
Survivors of the Stolen Generations began holding annual commemorations on the anniversary of the National Apology. They wanted to remind Australia that, despite all promises, Aboriginal children are now being removed from their families at a faster rate than during the historic Stolen Generations era.
While hosting these Aboriginal events each year, I witnessed Marie Bashir’s natural warmth towards men and women who were literally shaking with emotion.
Many told heartbreaking stories. Marie had a special talent that stemmed in part from her extensive experience and training as a psychiatrist as well as her own human values. His gentle voice and wisely chosen words had an observable healing power.
Marie Bashir and Rob Hirst also shared the love of extraordinary partners in their lives, enjoyed their extended family, and formed many long-lasting friendships. They were both proud of their children.
The joy they found in music struck just the right note for these two fascinating lives.
Eventually Marie played her violin until she could no longer play it. Rob sold a much-loved drum kit to benefit musicians in the Northern Territory and travelers who were sick or going through hard times.
Such generous, kindred spirits, united not by age but by an endless belief in what is best for all of us.
Dr Jeff McMullen AM is a journalist, author and filmmaker known for his reporting and advocacy for 60 years. McMullen has served as a foreign correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, a correspondent for Four Corners and Sixty Minutes, presenter of ABC Television’s 33-episode Issue Series, Opinion Difference, and director of independent documentaries. He was awarded the United Nations Media Peace Prize for his trilogy of hour-long documentaries about the conflict in Central America.
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