It wasn't the death threats, it wasn't being recognised in the street, and it wasn't that he could barely take a sick day due to the workload that led to the decision to leave for Queanbeyan Magistrate Michael Antrum.
It wasn't even the job, entirely, that made him decide to go. Mr Antrum has packed his bags and will return to Sydney to take up a role at the Downing Centre, and a new magistrate will take his place on the bench at Queanbeyan.
Country magistrates can only stay in a job in one place for five years to avoid becoming too close to the community they serve, but as that time creeps closer, Mr Antrum decided to cut it short to prevent disruption to his children's schooling as they enter college years.
But he is looking forward to having people in Sydney with whom to share the workload, which was one of the biggest challenges in Queanbeyan and for country magistrates across Australia.
In addition to presiding over the magistrates court in Queanbeyan - dealing with matters like drink- and drug-driving, domestic violence, drugs charges, murder, rape and robbery - Mr Antrum was also the coroner. He was the magistrate at Cooma for three days every second week. He was the children's court magistrate and he dealt with Commonwealth offences, and said it was very busy on the Commonwealth warrant front, being the closest NSW court to Canberra.
"Certainly, there's no time to get bored at Queanbeyan," Mr Antrum said.
He said in some matters and with certain people, "you start to wonder if anything is working".
"On the flip side, you often get people, particularly in the children's court or young adults, who you can see it when that light goes on," Mr Antrum said.
"Those things do occur regularly and that's the silver lining."
Mr Antrum said working in Queanbeyan and living in Canberra was "the perfect solution" to avoid becoming too close to the community he served. But in a small town like Cooma, it was hard not to be recognised.
"Unfortunately, it gets a bit uncomfortable if you keep running into people who appear before you," he said.
One day, he was taking the back way through the Cooma streets to avoid the problem when he heard "Antrum" being called.
"It was a young woman, probably 21, who wanted to tell me she was doing much better now. She was off the drugs and it was a good thing I took her licence off her. I couldn't remember who she was, but I thanked her for her comments and wished her well," Mr Antrum said.
"At the end of the day, you can impose punishments but people are generally reasonable."
But there are some instances where that is not the case. In one particular instance, a man was charged and jailed for a death threat against Mr Antrum.
"We're very exposed. People get upset about the decisions I make," he said.
"Having to explain to your kids and your wife about the precautions they need to take, it's pretty confronting for teenage kids."
In recent years, there has been a renewed emphasis on judicial health. Mr Antrum said it was something all magistrates were aware of, and something that was particularly important in his role as coroner, where his work was most confronting.
"Down here we have the real issue around motor vehicle collisions, people driving whilst fatigued, people driving whilst intoxicated, people driving under the influence of illicit drugs, but in particular those people who travel a long way, for example going to the snow, and they decide to push it a little bit further and then of course they have a collision with a tree, or in the worst circumstances with an oncoming vehicle," he said.
"Those matters are particularly harrowing."
Mr Antrum said the workload wasn't reflective of any sort of crime wave in the region. It was purely a result of the sheer scale of the geographical area that the court covered.
It's one of the reasons he doesn't take sick days. There's unlikely to be a spare magistrate to take his place and he doesn't want to have to reschedule the 80 to 90 people who have "sweated it out anxiously waiting for their day in court".
In his previous job at Wagga Wagga, he took a week off because he couldn't talk. Since being in Queanbeyan, he hasn't taken a single sick day.
"I did go onto the bench in Cooma frightfully sick a few months ago because the defendant and his barrister were from Melbourne and they were quite keen for me to proceed, fair enough, but I had to take regular breaks. I sat there with a green face and a bucket under the bench. It was pretty full on."
He said the difficulty in serving a broad area meant people had to travel a fairly long way to get to court. If there were delays, or traffic issues, it could frustrate an already busy list.
But while more resourcing would help, Mr Antrum got on with the job as best he could.
He sees his work as a contribution to society for being brought up well.
"I've been very lucky. I've been privileged to receive a good education, to receive a good income as a lawyer, [be] given good jobs. I think there does come a time when people who are the beneficiary of that owe something back, and I think this is one of the ways you can do that," Mr Antrum said.
"I just come in here and I apply the law. I haven't got any other skills. I'd be crap as a plumber, so this is a good choice for me."
He'll miss Queanbeyan and particularly the staff at the registry - "this would be one of the best registries in the state, no doubt about it" - and said he loved the sense of community about the place.
"The work of St Benedict's here is extraordinary. The number of times Father Michael is sitting in the back assisting someone who really has nowhere to go, with just the shirt on their back, having Father Michael sitting there, it's a wonderful reflection on humanity," Mr Antrum said.
"It's easy to make fun of Queanbeyan, I know that, everyone knows that, but 'in the shadow of Canberra', 'struggle town', I think that is now way out of date. Queanbeyan is a progressive up and coming area ... people realise this is a really nice place to live."
