It's like a farewell tour for a rock star or sports hero. Gerry Ryan is showing The Australian Financial Review Magazine around his Jayco caravan factory in Dandenong on the outskirts of Melbourne, a 26-hectare site where some 1200 people work. It's so big Ryan zips around the various buildings in a golf cart as he proudly shows off the $500 million business he's built from scratch over the past four decades.

Whether they be assembling a chassis, working the machinery putting together caravan parts, building the small trailer-park cabins or sewing the upholstery, to a person the staff all know the boss's name. And the boss knows theirs, inquiring after family members and insisting to one worker who's about to retire that, yes, she does have to have a farewell party and that he'll take care of it.