Describing Peter Garrett as highly recognisable is a bit like saying the Sydney Opera House is quite noticeable.
Some stop in their tracks upon encountering him while meandering, dog walking and running in parklands snaking through inner-western Sydney’s Annandale, home to the rock’n’roller, activist and former politician.
Some know him to say “hi” to. But Garrett (very tall and rangy, and even with a sun-smart broad-brimmed hat) is so monumentally physically distinctive and familiar that perfect strangers seem to feel they know him.
He nods in a modest “yeah, it’s me” way. Smiles and signals warmly. Says g’day. Even a neighbourhood dog careens across the greenery to drop its ball at his feet. He picks it up. Tosses it.
Garrett grew up on Sydney’s northern beaches. He travelled Australia and the world endlessly with Midnight Oil, the band he’s fronted across 50 years. He’s lived throughout Sydney. But he’s forged a deep attachment to Annandale, whose wide, undulating terrace and tree-lined backstreets improbably exude a bucolic serenity so close to the city centre.
“It’s a wonderful neighbourhood,” he says. “I’m having a renewed love affair with Sydney. Ignoring some of the depredations of the developers and other things that have been done over the years – I think it’s a brilliant city. Yes, there’s issues around night life and traffic and whatever, but I absolutely adore the waterways and the harbour and the light.”
The former president of the Australian Conservation Foundation lauds how communities like his lobbied to regenerate old urban industrial land into corridors of native park and bush. With boyish passion and wonder he celebrates the growth of new plantings as we walk.
“You don’t have to go to the doctor! You just go for a walk from Annandale to Blackwattle Bay [down by the nearby harbour] and back and you’re ready to take on the day.”
Garrett walks often for health and headspace.
“I usually walk two or three times a day. Morning, I’ll usually go for a decent one. I’m not obsessive, but I do have to – with my skeletal structure and past occupations – I’ve got no choice,” he says, a nod to an adult lifetime of celebrated, trademark physically vigorous Oils performances.
“I’ve always walked. Even when touring overseas. On a night off, I wouldn’t necessarily be carousing, although I’ve done a bit of that. More likely I’d read and then go for a big long walk … the outskirts of a city or around the docks or the industrial sections of cities I find really interesting. Particularly in America where half’s being reborn and half is in decay.”
It’s a neat segue to contemporary America. Garrett has, of course, also been monumentally political since before the birth of Midnight Oil in 1976, from their genesis as Farm, and later as anti-nukes activist, leading conservationist and parliamentarian.
On entering federal parliament for Labor in 2004, he did so with a fairly active back catalogue, not least 1982’s US Forces, that government and media attack dogs tried to club him with for his “dangerous” criticism of American global political interference, nuclear threat and the precious US-Australia alliance.
The song seems very prescient 43 years later.
“I think we [the Oils] would all say we had no idea some of those songs we wrote at that time would have sharper edges and be potentially even more pungent today than they were then. That’s a slightly depressing thought,” he says.
“But if history is any guide, when you have extreme politics, autocratic politics, vengeful, nasty politics, politics which scapegoats people, politics that sees the execution of power as the raison d’etre, well there’s nothing new about that – you’ve just got to read Shakespeare. But then you realise that digging in for a different set of values and a future that shouldn’t be framed that way is absolutely essential from day one,” he says as we sit at a picnic table.
For too long, he says, our decision makers have assumed Australia’s only viable security option was to have a very powerful friend even if they were an unlikeable bully.
“There was a degree of subservience – that that was the price you had to pay. Now, that has been taken to a new dangerous, illogical and expensive extreme with the [$350bn-plus] Aukus deal which both governments bought into, Morrison to begin with and then the current Labor government. I’m on a unity ticket with Bob Carr and Paul Keating. This is the worst deal that we’ve ever seen done by a sovereign Australian government.”
When Garrett muses on the “national ledger”, he lists a stable modern economy that weathered the global financial crisis, solid democratic institutions, a tradition of multiculturalism as positives. Subservience to the US – come what may – is close to his top negative.
“But the first and most important is that we still haven’t come to grips with what happened when [Captain James] Cook and Co came on board and the impact it had on First Nations peoples,” he says.
“Part of the problem is that we haven’t had a whole of nation recognition of the truth of dispossession and a whole of nation agreement to remedy the dispossession in a respectful way. So long as you’ve got outlier states like WA in particular and as long as you’ve got outlier industries like some sections of the pastoral industry and some sections of the mining industry, and as long as you’ve got outlier political parties like One Nation and now a fair slab of the [federal Liberal-National party] coalition, it’s a hugely difficult task.’’
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He says that despite the parlous state of the world and the second rise of Trump’s America, he remains an optimist.
At 71, Garrett appears nimble and fit. So, how does he feel about ageing? He laughs. Considers it for a moment.
“I’m OK with it but in saying that I’m not particularly happy about it. But there’s nothing much I can do about it.”
But even some rockers get to be old, right? Like, the Rolling Stones are still on the road.
“Yeah, but they should come off though. With every respect for the way they’ve managed to keep that thing going they definitely should come off. But by any rational assessment of how you feel when you wake up early in the morning, the last place you really think you’re going to be is on a stage and playing. And yet it becomes the fuel that lights the fire. I mean I just figure keep moving or die. So, I’m keeping on moving.’’
And, so, we move on to the path again and stroll towards Blackwattle Bay.
This year he’s still moving on stage too, fronting his band the Alter Egos. He’s touring now. His two adult daughters, May and Grace, accomplished musicians who have their own band Raintalker, now sing backing with the Alter Egos.
“They grew up when I was active with the ACF and then in politics so they’ve never really quite worked out what their old man does. But having them be a part of this – finding that they are still wanting to be with you and making music together, well that’s just lovely.”
The road, as a young bloke, must’ve been quite different?
“Well it definitely was wild. You’re fearless. I don’t suppose I was very different from many other people of my age at that time, though I was probably much more interested in politics. Though I still thought I was bulletproof. So, every big wave I shouldn’t have caught and every stage that I jumped off, it’s all show business really. Every overnighter we did after playing til one in the morning – there’s a lot of years of pushing very hard in ways that probably not everybody would maybe think was particularly good for you. But I wouldn’t change it. Even the crazy stuff.”
He says the Oils were and are – like many bands of their era – “quite tough. Physically”.
You do lose “nearest and dearest” along the road, he laments.
But the greatest myths of rock’n’roll are that “it was all just about rebellion and secondly that you hope you’ll die before you get old”.
“The essence is that it’s music played to people. That’s timeless. If you can still play for people and they still want to come and listen, then there’s a bit of magic, a bit of alchemy, a bit of lightning and thunder about it,’’ he says.
“Would you prefer to be reading X and watching Elon Musk try to destroy the world?”
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Peter Garrett and the Alter Egos will appear at the St Kilda festival on 16 February and Twilight At Taronga on Friday 21 February. For other concerts, see here.