Courier boss Bob Barnett is being remembered as a giant of business in the Illawarra and a man who couldn't stop working right to the end.
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Mr Barnett, who died on Monday aged 84, founded the courier company that bore his name more than 40 years ago and grew it into a significant enterprise which employed most of the entire extended family at some stage.
His daughter Kaz told the Mercury how it all began - with a story that showed the man's direct approach.
Mr Barnett used to have the Golden Fleece service station at Figtree, where the Hellenic Club is now. He was fixing a truck for a driver who needed to get going soon - but the part would be two days before it could be brought down from Sydney.
Telling the driver "I'll be back in three hours", he drove to Sydney, returned with the part, fixed the truck, and realised he had found a major gap in the market. Barnetts had made its first delivery.
"The next day he went to the dole office and the finance company and he got five drivers and leased five one-tonners and started Barnetts Couriers," Kaz said.
"He thought this is what I need to do - Sydney to Wollongong, twice a day."
Granddaughter Chaylene O'Keefe said he was "determined, always a thinker, just like his father - always devising different things".
She said he was an "icon of the transport industry".
He never liked holidays; he liked work. He didn't like to sit idle, is what they say
- Kaz and Chaylene
Kaz and Chaylene both described him as a "workaholic". "He never liked holidays; he liked work," Kaz said.
"He didn't like you to sit still," Chaylene said. "He was always delegating you to do a job, even if you didn't think it was necessary. He did. He didn't like to sit idle, is what they say."
Mr Barnett was right - a courier business certainly was needed. With rarely a day off Barnetts expanded from its humble beginnings - in the extended back verandah of a Fairy Meadow house - to larger premises in North Wollongong, which it outgrew. They then built the current base on Montague St - where 110 people are now employed.
It wasn't all easy going. In 2016 the business was raided by police after two fatal crashes in four years, with concerns raised about the safety record and working conditions. A family member who was a driver was jailed over a crash which killed a student and a tow-truck driver on the Hume Hwy in 2012.
But despite failing health and a bad fall over recent years, Bob Barnett kept working, totally involved in the business, until the end.
"Even towards the end, he had to have things made a certain way, and was constantly thinking about making things, and being successful," Chaylene said.
He leaves behind four children, 10 grandchildren, and 16 great-grandchildren. He was clear in his request for a private funeral - if there had to be one at all.