"You get this outpouring of emotion and gratitude just to be there," Miller-Heidke says.

"For me, I love sitting in an audience and after the year we've had - without trying to sound too wanky - it's kind of part of the healing process for me.

"We're still going through it, things are still tough, and we need it.

"We need to be together and feel that connection and sense of hope again."

The acclaimed art-pop singer-songwriter has only performed sporadically to audiences herself during the COVID-19 pandemic. The performances have been limited to her native Queensland, where the 39-year-old returned permanently this year after previously living in Melbourne.

However, in spring Miller-Heidke will finally launch into a national tour of her fifth album Child In Reverse, which was released last October. Child In Reverse was Miller-Heidke's first pop album since 2014's O Vertigo after she spent the years in between focused on opera, writing the score for Muriel's Wedding The Musical, raising her son Ernie and representing Australia at Eurovision with the song Zero Gravity.

"I feel like I've never given this album a proper birth," she says. "I haven't been able to travel the country for a long time obviously, so I'm pinching myself it's finally going to happen."

Child In Reverse displayed Miller-Heidke's operatic vocals and unique twist on pop music, and was among the most personal of her career. She credits motherhood for driving her desire "to be more honest" with herself and explore shame.

"I just hadn't had the experience of hearing a song that describes a particular emotion for an event and feeling left alone," she says.

"I shied away from that raw truth a bit less. It could be just getting older and feeling more confident, I don't know.

"When you have a child your identity is a bit shattered and you're left with the pieces to put back together again. Everything was more raw and to the surface."

The inability to tour her album has given Miller-Heidke the opportunity to explore other creative endeavours.

She's been writing music for a TV show and musical and later this year she'll make her acting debut in six-part ABC comedy series, Preppers, co-written and starring Nakkiah Lui.

Preppers follows an Aboriginal woman who meets a mismatched group of "doomsday preppers" after a cataclysmic event.

"I came up through opera, which is a kind of acting, often it's not good," Miller-Heidke says. "It wasn't entirely alien to me."

Kate Miller-Heidke's Child In Reverse tour comes to Newcastle City Hall on October 17.