Starting out at the Buffs two weeks before his 21st birthday in 1992, it's safe to say that he and the club have grown up together through the past 21 years.

Mr Wilkins joined the Buffs staff as a part-time gaming attendant while he ``looked for a real job'', but management soon spotted his potential and he was given opportunities to progress his career at the club.

''It was a very modest, small little club and I never envisaged that I would still be here today,'' he said.

''Half my life has been at the Buffs Club and I am sad to move away, but I will always feel like I am a Buff.'' 

Mr Wilkins shocked fellow staff and Buffs customers when he announced his departure to take on the role of chief executive officer of the  Brothers Leagues Club in Townsville in October.

He will  hand the Buffs Club reins to assistant manager Karen Graham.

He said he was ready for a new challenge, but admitted it would be a strange feeling to no longer enter the Buffs building every morning.

''It's scary but exciting thinking I am going to do something new,'' he said.

Mr Wilkins was a trainee manager at the Buffs Club by 1994 and progressed through to assistant manager before becoming executive manager in 2002.

He said the role had had its challenges across the years, but he was proud of his achievements.

''I was young and I got into a management role fairly quick, and I had to oversee people who had been in the industry longer than me and were definitely older than me and I had to earn their respect,'' he said.

Mr Wilkins helped  shift the direction of the club from a basic public bar with a male-dominated presence to an attractive club with a near equal split in male and female membership numbers.

''I think I have helped make this club not just a boys' lodge and a boys' club, we have really worked hard to make it attractive to females and families,'' he said.

If the awards received through the years are anything to go by, Mr Wilkins has every right to be proud of his achievements.

The Buffs Club is a seven- time winner of North Queensland's Best Club and two-time winner of Queensland's Best Social Club.

But it was an award received closer to home that meant the most,  Mr Wilkins said.

''When we won the Business of the Year at the Mount Isa Business Awards it was great a feeling,'' he said.

''Being recognised in other regions is great, but to be recognised in your own town as being the business of the year, I felt that was probably bigger than all the other awards and I was really honoured when we got that.'' 

Mr Wilkins said he would particularly miss some of the patrons who had become a fixture in his life at the Buffs.

''One bloke still drinks here and he was drinking here when I started in 1992,'' he said.

Mr Wilkins said Mount Isa would always be home to him, his wife Courtenay and their three children.

He has a rich family history within the city, being the grandson of a Finnish migrant who began working underground in the mines in 1934, and the son of Keith Wilkins, the first interstate apprentice employed by the mines.

His father arrived from Mudgee, New South Wales, on his 15th birthday  - January 31, 1957 - to start and electrical apprenticeship.

His mother Ritva (nee Mikkola) was born in Mount Isa in 1944, moving to the Sunshine Coast as a child before moving back to Mount Isa as a teenager.

She was crowned ''Miss Sungirl'' at Lake Moondarra in 1962.

''I think some people thought since I had been here for 21 years that I would die here and my ashes would be poured in the pond, but sadly, that is not going to happen, and we are moving on,'' he said.

''I am certainly not leaving a sinking ship; I am just giving them a new captain.''