Silver River: A memoir of family – lost, made and found

A moving and inspiring memoir of families lost and rediscovered, by a founding member of legendary band Midnight Oil.


For fifty years, songwriter, guitarist and keyboard player Jim Moginie was a driving force behind the startling rise and global success of one of Australia’s most powerful, influential and iconic rock bands. Through the ups and downs of writing and releasing generation-defining songs, touring relentlessly and enduring the intense scrutiny drawn by the band’s uncompromising lyrics and environmental activism, the members of Midnight Oil developed a feeling of ‘five against the world’, the firm friends forming a de facto family.

For Jim Moginie, the band was a calling and a refuge, and a distraction from a growing feeling that something was missing from his life. Raised by a loving family, he’d learned as a child that his biological mother had given him up for adoption. Gradually, alongside the Oils’ unfolding saga of stardom and controversy, Jim began a quest to find his birth family, these twin paths leading him from suburban Sydney through the nascent Australian punk scene and the uncharted musical territory of the Western deserts to the stadiums of Europe and America, the meandering roads and verdant hills of rural Ireland, countless musical collaborations, and poignant reunions with band members and long-lost relatives.

Threaded with vivid recollections of childhood and travel, entertaining behind-the-scenes stories of band life, and fascinating insights into the creative processes that produced some of this country’s most beloved songs, The Silver River is at once a lyrical coming-of-age story, a heart-warming family chronicle, and a must-read for anyone interested in the history of Australian music.

Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
Imprint: HarperCollins AU
Publication date: 06/03/2024