After six years Glyn Roberts is readying for a new challenge and a dramatic change of scene.
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When the Castlemaine State Festival, which kicks off on Friday, wraps up, the almost-accidental arts boss will relocate to Townsville to take up a job overseeing the North Queensland city's arts, culture and events.
"It's a step up into a slightly different sector, the public service, but also still on the pulse of driving arts and culture in regional Australia, which has become a passion of mine," he says.
Roberts is a huge fan of Castlemaine, which he believes is unique in its liveability, lifestyle choices and world-class creative scene.
"Art and artists are to Castlemaine, what the Barossa is to wine," he says.
But after three festivals he feels clear about moving on.
"Festivals particularly, I think, and artistic or cultural organisations in general, always need refreshment. They always need new leadership and new ideas.
"And also, they're bloody hard work to run, they're not easy. So I need refreshment as well."
His "beautiful wife", Nida, may have been influential in the choice of new job.
"She grew up in the tropics," Roberts says. "And so she was after somewhere that was warm all year round."
He still remembers the "bitter winter" the couple moved into in Castlemaine when he started as festival director in mid-2017.
"I remember it being absolutely freezing," he says.
"But everyone was really supportive and kind and offered us fantastic places to live and lent us cars and really looked after us."
That set the tone for their experience of the town - "always open and cheerful and generous and nothing's a problem".
That was the case when during Roberts' first festival as director in 2019 a Korean dance troupe blew the electrics in the Goods Shed when they plugged in a hair dryer at the start of a show.
"We just called our wonderful electrician and they figured it out," Roberts says. "And the wonderful volunteers in front-of-house entertained the crowd in the dark."
It was the only hiccup that year, although the next edition was a somewhat different story.
"The COVID one was so strange because we had to do everything outside and it was not even weather proofed," Roberts says.
An enduring image for him is of Radiohead pianist Josh Cohen playing "very sad Radiohead songs where the lyrics literally go 'Rain down on me' as it rained down on him and the grand piano was filling with water like a bathtub".
"It was kind of a beautiful and very fitting moment, very COVID."
Surprisingly, running the festival is technically only Roberts' second ever proper job.
Growing up in Melbourne, he had always wanted to be in the arts, particularly the theatre, and "moved through the throes of maybe wanting to be an actor and then maybe wanting to be a playwright and a writer".
"Then very quickly I found out that I was pretty good at putting on people's plays rather than maybe putting on my own plays or being in them," he says.
"And of course no-one really wants to do this thankless job in the Melbourne independent performance scene so the task kept falling to me.
"Through that I kind of made a bit of a name for myself and then ... started touring shows around Australia."
As it happened, the shows increasingly took Roberts to Brisbane, and after a while he was offered a job at one of Brisbane's biggest theatres.
"That job at La Boite Theatre was essentially the first job I ever had," he laughs. "I was 30."
After doing it for a while he also got involved with helping curate part of the Brisbane Festival.
"So I started moving into the festival space, and after a while I was looking around for, you know, a nice and interesting festival to lead," he says.
The Castlemaine festival board had been "willing to take a punt" on him, Roberts says.
"I think it worked out.
"It's been a fantastic six years, and an absolute privilege and honour to put on this great festival out in central Victoria.
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Among the festival's achievements over his time in the top job has been the creation of its Goods Shed headquarters, which are being redeveloped into a new art centre for the town.
"I think and I hope I'm leaving the festival in a really good place," Roberts says.
"I think my time has been one of great growth and I hope some great art as well."
In 2023, he says, he is "going out with a bang".
The event which kicks off on Friday is keeping its "elongoated" 16-day schedule and is "just a lot of great music, a lot of great performances, and things like dialogues and open studios, which are back in abundance."
Among the shows and acts Roberts is particularly looking forward to are: Vika and Linda Bull; circus performance A Simple Space by Gravity and Other Myths; music and dance event Maloya Moshpit, which sees 300-year-old Reunion Island Creole culture presented in Castlemaine by local organisation Punctum; live art piece Night Walks with Teenagers by a Canadian company which worked with local teens to create tours through the town as seen from their perspectives.
Then there are the 70-plus open artist studios around the region.
The Castlemaine State Festival runs from March 24 to April 9. For more information visit: https://castlemainefestival.com.au/
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