Midnight Oil returning to Selinas for the first time in more than two decades, a warm-up for the world tour which starts in South America on Anzac Day and was to end in Sydney on Armistice Day – detect a pattern here? - was no small beer.

Ahead of the Easter Thursday show in Coogee, few doubted they could pull off at the very least a workmanlike performance. Goodwill alone would see to that.

Ok, it wasn't the only-those-in-the-know secret gig  at the Marrickville Bowling Club they played the previous Sunday.(Only a few hundred actually got in to that low-ceilinged, plainfaced, old school room after rumours of the secret gig spread that weekend, but soon enough the numbers boasting they were there will reach Olympic stadium-size. Believe no one.)

Whether in the full ground floor or on the lounges in the VVIP section of the VIP upper deck, most overheard conversations seemed to  feature Oils war stories, "yeah, 1978" or "Manly Vale, a lot".

All but one of the band had been playing consistently, here and overseas, in the decade-plus since the band went on a political career-enforced hiatus. And the one who had had a non-musical job, former federal minister Garrett, P., had returned to the studio and stage last year to impressive reviews as a solo act.

What was in some question though was whether a bunch of men in their 60s, playing to a bunch of people predominantly in their 40s and 50s could generate anything close to an atmosphere as viscerally and emotionally charged as had been the norm way, way back in the day.

The verdict? To borrow from Back On The Borderline – one of eight songs they played from the seminal second album, Head Injuries - some time when that mirror shows the smile of disbelief you know something special just happened.

A long show of 29 songs, which began with the moody synths of Outside World and ended with the never more topical US Forces, had agitation and even meditation, a drum solo and a trumpet, guitars in dialogue and Garrett in monologue ("raging against that dying light … that's why we are here," he said before they roared through Stand In Line).

And power. Not just power, but oh, so much power.

Outside Selinas, young locals and backpackers sat and talked to a soundtrack of anonymous music that mostly drowned out the interior sound, oblivious to what the grandparents were up to behind them.

Inside, those grandparents were shouting back "How many dreams remain? This is a feeling too strong to contain … these will not be forgotten years" as if making a blood pact with Midnight Oil.

Which it probably is. Which it probably deserves to be.

Yeah, that was some return.