"It's an obscure art form that's been buried in history," Oakes says.

He's on a mission to change that, with an exhibition of his handcrafted puppets in the window display space at Maitland Regional Art Gallery, where they are spot-lit at night.

"They can sort of peer out of the window at passers-by," he says. "I have never seen puppets in a gallery anywhere else.

"That's one of the reasons I came along here to the gallery and said I'd be interested in doing a puppet exhibition. Puppetry's an art form, it's a very, very old art form."

Oakes first fell in the thrall of puppetry as a pre-schooler, when his friend's father performed a Punch and Judy show. Soon, he made his first puppet in plasticine.

"I was entranced," Oakes recalls. "I thought this was fantastic, this was what I wanted to be."

There wasn't much work for puppeteers, so Oakes became a teacher at a school for delinquent boys, then moved into law, which brought him to Maitland.

After retiring, he went to a workshop run by a Czechoslovakian couple, who were master puppeteers. "That was a bit of a fillip," he says.

Oakes shared his rediscovered passion with friends at the Maitland Repertory Theatre, and hooked in enough actors to form a hand-puppet group.

His contagious enthusiasm then won the group a start-up grant from the University of Newcastle's Centre for 21st Century Humanities two years ago. Frank's Fantastic Fairy Tale Theatre was born, with the money buying sound equipment and materials to build a mobile theatre set.

The theatre has since performed more than 20 shows at public events, including plays based on local history, as well as performing takes on classic fairy tales at private parties.

While Oakes loves all forms of puppetry, his particular interest is in making string marionette puppets. "It's a different genre," he explains.

And he prefers to write his own storylines and develop his own characters, as he has for the current exhibition entitled The Myth of the Angry Wizards of Maitland.

"I wanted to make something that's not like anyone else's, so I had to drag it out of my head," Oakes says.

"One of the challenges is using bits and pieces and bringing them to a quasi-human form. They must reflect some sort of human desire or quality."

Oakes, himself a reluctant actor, says that one of the best things about puppets is that "you can hide behind them". Puppets can also get away with being brazenly outspoken and doing dastardly deeds, because they provide "a second layer", he says.

"I relished the freedom that making wizards allowed to me," he says. "You can let yourself go, you can hide behind it and let it rip."

The puppets have allowed him to vent concerns for the Hunter River.

"They're angry because somebody's stuffed up the environment," he says.

One of his wizards, Cleverbroke, who has the demeanour of a man of the law, threatens a "super flood... the biggest ever seen... if you don't look after my darling river properly".

Exhibited alongside his new characters, is a puppet Oakes made when he a teen. He recovered it from the garage and dressed it anew for a role as wizard's apprentice.

"The girls here (at the gallery) reckon he's a bit creepy," Oakes says. "There's a dark side, I don't mind a bit of that."

He notes the plotline of Punch and Judy, which was written in the 16th century, is basically "a string of deaths".

"Tell me that's not violent and politically incorrect," he exclaims. "The thing is that's a story that was honed in fairgrounds against hot competition, and that's how it managed to survive. You've got to pull people in. People find it funny."

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