Victoria's 48th premier Daniel Andrews was a boy from the bush who pivoted into politics early and crashed through Labor's ranks.
Born in 1972 to parents Bob and Jan Andrews, the family ran a milk bar in Melbourne's north before they lost almost everything in a fire and in 1983 moved more than 230km away to Wangaratta.
Mr Andrews went to the Marist Brothers' Galen Catholic College before he returned to Melbourne to study at Monash University some years later and an interest in politics led him to joining the Australian Labor Party in 1993.
His pride in working hard started early and it was that attitude - along with irrepressible ambition - that enabled him to become Labor's state organiser in 1999.
Only a year later, he was promoted to assistant state secretary.
In 2002 he was elected to Victoria's parliament as the member for Mulgrave.
Then-premier Steve Bracks elevated Mr Andrews to cabinet in 2006 before he was promoted to health minister less than a year later.
In 2010, he was elected as leader of Victorian Labor at the age of 38 after the party lost government.
He led Labor back to government four years later in 2014.
In February, he chalked up 3000 days as Victorian premier, putting him on equal terms with only five of the state's leaders before him and qualifying him to be immortalised in statue outside Melbourne's state government offices.
Almost a decade after taking the top job, Mr Andrews on Tuesday announced his resignation as Victoria's longest-serving Labor premier and Australia's longest-serving incumbent leader.
He harked back to his propensity for hard work as he addressed reporters at Victoria's parliament.
"To have been premier for nine years and a leader of my party for 13 years is a greater set of opportunities than I ever thought would be afforded to me," Mr Andrews said.
"(I was) a kid from the country with only - really - an aspiration to do good, to work hard, to work with teams of people to perhaps make things better."
At 51, the Mulgrave MP came a long way from the Monash University student who future Labor deputy campaign director-turned-pollster Kos Samaras first met in Young Labor in 1995.
Mr Andrews struck him as a serious political operator even then.
"He looked like someone who was clearly in the rush. At every level of his career, he was always at the pointy end," Mr Samaras previously told AAP.
Ahead of Mr Andrews marking 3000 days in office, Monash University political historian Paul Strangio predicted Victorians would remember the premier for his government's long list of social policy reforms and transformative infrastructure regime.
Professor Strangio also believed the premier's stewardship of the state's six COVID-19 lockdowns would form part of his political legacy - but he acknowledged Mr Andrews had put noses out of joint as he became more powerful.
"He's reluctant when it comes to scrutiny. He tends to barge his way through controversies" Prof Strangio said.
Mr Samaras put Mr Andrews' longevity down to mental fitness in the face of internal controversies, injuring his spine and ribs in a serious fall and threats to him and his family during the pandemic.
But for some, the controversies - including the axing of the 2026 Victorian Commonwealth Games and spiralling costs of major projects - have amounted to Mr Andrews' ultimate failure, leading them to unceremoniously farewell him as the state's "worst" premier.
Opposition leader John Pesutto said Mr Andews left Victoria broken and with a "trashed" reputation.
When announcing his resignation, though, Mr Andrews maintained the same attitude he always has - unfazed by his critics.
"There's two types of people - there's people who fixate on these things and they don't tend to build on things - they're all about themselves," he said.
"I've always been about the work - work hard and then work harder again. The results will speak for themselves and people will form their own views."
