Outgoing premier Mark McGowan has thanked West Australians for their support, after receiving a rock star's welcome from media as he arrived for his final day leading the state.
Mr McGowan made the shock announcement on Monday that he would be stepping down as premier by the end of the week, citing exhaustion.
He has kept a low profile since then, with the attention on the battle between Deputy Premier Roger Cook and Health Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson to replace him.
Mr Cook is now the only candidate to become premier once Mr McGowan officially resigns.
Speaking for the first time since he announced his departure, as journalists surrounded his car, a relaxed Mr McGowan said he was grateful to the people of WA.
"My main emotion, to be honest with you, is just gratitude and thanks for what everyone has done for me and what the state's done for me," he said from his car window as he drove into his last day of work.
"Thank you. You've been great to me and I think the state's in a pretty good place."
'I'm not regretting it'
After 30 years in public life, including 27 in parliament, Mr McGowan said he had no second thoughts about bringing it all to an end.
"That's a good thing actually, I'm glad I don't have second thoughts. I'm not regretting it," he said.
"I'm still getting used to life, but all the attention hopefully will go to Roger and Rita and the team.
"Roger knows what to do. He's very experienced, he's very likeable, very decent man and him and Rita are, I think, a great team."
Mr Cook will be formally chosen by Labor MPs as their new leader on Tuesday and is expected to be sworn in as premier on Thursday.
He will become acting premier from Saturday, with formal arrangements meaning Mr McGowan is technically on leave until the swearing-in ceremony.
No time to relax just yet
But he said the work had not stopped yet.
"Resigning has a lot of work attached to it. It's a lot of packing and meetings and farewells and all that sort of stuff," Mr McGowan told a pack of reporters.
"People have been so kind to me the last few days.
"I've been around all the government departments saying thank you to the people in Treasury and Premier and Public Sector Commission and those sorts of places and responding to messages and meetings and signing things.
"We had a staff farewell function and so all that was great, people have been great."
As to plans for life after politics, Mr McGowan happily reported he had no plans.
"I'm going to watch some Netflix, do some walking. Our dog's going to get a lot of walking," he laughed.
"I'm going to go back to being an ordinary person. That is my ambition."
