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My best friend By Ian Robinson Vale Peter Portelli. My best friend Peter started working for me as a motor mechanic in 1984. When I wound up that business in 1987 I helped him set up his own workshop and worked with him for a few months and was a consultant for him over the next13 years. In late 2000 after a breakdown in my then relationship I moved back to Sydney and asked him if he had some part time work while I looked for a service manager position. The initial job contract he gave me was for about 2 months. Apart from a few months in 2003 where I was travelling and working on another unrelated business project I stayed working for him until his untimely death from cancer in October 2007. And spent the next 11 months winding up his business for the family estate. Which is the sort of onerous task I would not gladly accept again. Peter was the most generous employer I have ever met. If I needed to do work on my car he gave me time in the workshop and still paid me to supervise our other staff. Every so often he would say I needed a better car and give me one free as a bonus. Often if I needed some time out during a work day as long as I had worked out the staff work list for the day I would go and do what I needed and still get paid for the full day. When I first met Peter he was not qualified a mechanic under our state laws but was a competent worker with pretty good skills. He went on to gain his qualifications as a mechanic, panel beater and spray painter. He was an unconventional engineer in some ways using an angle grinder or a die grinding burr to quickly fix a minor problem that I would have dealt with in a lathe or a milling machine.But he sure was a great bloke.

Contributed by ianrobbo on July 8, 2009, at 7:42 AM UTC.

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