Fergus Linehan is relishing his role as director of the Sydney Arts Festival, but will still come back to Dublin, he tells Arminta Wallace

The words "January" and "festival" don't seem to fit too happily in the same sentence. Until you add "Sydney" to the mix - and then, as Fergus Linehan declares with a broad grin, it's party time.

The former director of the Dublin Theatre Festival has gone to the other end of the earth to run the Sydney Arts Festival and he is clearly loving it.

"It's a really interesting festival, because there's a huge sense of public ownership around it," he says, when he touches down for a brief visit to Dublin on a round-the-world promotional tour. "And January is the time of year when everybody celebrates. It's a joyful outpouring by the city. That's what you're programming into."

Does that rule out certain kinds of shows? "Absolutely," he says. "Just as, if you were doing a festival in Germany in February, that would also exclude certain types of shows."

Such, however, is an artistic director's purpose in life: to fit the shows currently available on the international arts scene to a particular festival in a particular time and place. "Sydney in January is hot," Linehan declares, with a perhaps unnecessary amount of relish. "It's humid. No one does any work, and the kids are off school. There's something almost hedonistic about the city. There's a great appetite for the exotic, and for things that are very emotionally charged. It's not that you have to keep it light, or happy-clappy, because there's an enormous curiosity; but the mood of January is extraordinary. It's incredibly good fun, I have to say. You find yourself going, 'Wow! This is great!'"

He flicks through the programme on his laptop. Music's big thing, Mercury Prize winner Antony and the Johnsons. Ballet's big thing, Sylvie Guillem and the Ballet Boyz. Theatre's big thing, Robert Lepage, with a piece called The Anderson Project. Kneehigh Theatre Company's Tristan and Yseult. Elvis Costello and Steve Nieve. The Declan Donnellan Twelfth Night. A video installation by the New York artist Tony Oursler. Essentially, it's the sort of mix of big international events and cutting-edge local work which would be par for the course at any international festival.

Linehan has brought his own ideas to the table, of course, doing away with an annual Latino music component which he felt had passed its sell-by date, bringing in a new children's programme strand based at Darling Harbour, establishing a series of what he calls "short, sharp shows" with off-peak starting times - some early, some late.

"Because of the scale of this festival," he says, "there's a lot of people who have an interest; a lot of stakeholders. You have to work carefully with that. But at the same time, people are really up for new things - expect them, actually. I think the other thing which is really strong in Oz is that if you say you're gonna do something, you've got to do it. Don't promise unless you're going to deliver."

Another tradition which is really strong at the Sydney festival is its emphasis on big, showcase outdoor events. "We do two free concerts in The Domain, a park in the centre of the city. About 80,000 people go to each of those. And then we finish with a ferrython on Australia Day."

Excuse me? A . . . what? "It's mad - I know. They race the ferries up the harbour and under the bridge. Half a million people come out to watch that." Ah, yes. Racing huge ferries up and down Sydney harbour. Art, Aussie-style. Linehan smiles patiently. He has heard these sort of namby-pamby complaints about the lack of culture Down Under many times before.

"People say that automatically, that Australia just doesn't have any art and culture. But when they think about it they have to double back a bit. There are lots of first-class Australian novelists, for instance. Thomas Kenneally, Peter Carey, David Malouf. You have to remember that it's a very new country - well, not for everybody there - but, let's say, as a democratic nation in its current form it's incredibly new. There just hasn't been the time to build up the sort of cultural references that you'd get in Europe. So when you talk about art, it depends what you're comparing yourself to."

As well as that, he says, there are distinct differences between Sydney and the rest of the continent. "There's Australia, and there's Sydney. Melbourne is very different - as a city, it has a much more European feel. Adelaide and Perth are more like British cities. But Sydney is sparkling harbour. It's big and brassy and it doesn't bow to anybody. It's like an American city with an Asian spin. It's like Shanghai or Hong Kong in lots of ways. Things are quite transient, and changing very fast - and at the moment, the cultural changes are making life very interesting there. Remember that moment when Ireland stopped defining itself culturally with reference to Britain, and things turned toward Europe a little more? I think that has happened - or is happening - with Sydney."

One of the biggest challenges facing the festival, Linehan says, is the size of Sydney itself. Visitors to the city see the cafe culture of Darling Harbour and Circular Quay, and rave about how picturesque it all is, how compact. What they usually don't see is the almost unimaginable urban sprawl which constitutes Sydney's outer suburbs. "It's a big issue," says Linehan. "On the one hand you have Circular Quay, with the Opera House and all of that going on. And then you have greater Sydney. Though there are only four and a half million people in Sydney, it's the same size as London or Beijing. Our major venue is the Opera House, but we also do a totally independent festival programme in Parramatta, which is west of the city.

"Personally I don't believe in 'bringing culture out to people' - but this is different. It's not like a community outreach thing; it's just trying to do something to accommodate the strange geography of the place. There are hundreds of thousands of people who live in Sydney and want to be involved in the festival, but getting in to Circular Quay is just not possible for them."

Life, Australian-style. Whereabouts in Sydney is chez Linehan? "I live out in Bronte," he says."

Which is?

"Two beaches up from Bondi. It's just beautiful. It's bizarre, in many ways. I mean, you get up in the morning and you go down to the water and you go in and swim around with the fish. And then you go off to work. It's beautiful, and I love it."

Does he love it enough to stay permanently? He thinks for a minute, then shakes his head. "What I do is so specific, and this job changes every three years, so . . . No. I don't think so."

He smiles a faraway smile. "Anyway, at some point one probably starts to hunger for 14-hour adaptations of Dostoyevksy novels. Don't you think?"

The Sydney Arts Festival runs Jan 7-26. See www.sydneyfestival.org.au