Jingsi Guo couldn't believe her luck.
The international journalism student had just jumped out of a Sydney cab to work on a university assignment when the Australian prime minister walked up and shook her hand.
"Am I in a dream?" she asked AAP on Sunday.
Back in Ms Guo's homeland of China, meeting a politician on the street is out of the question.
"Chinese politicians are very unapproachable, you would never meet the prime minister, no way," she said.
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Ms Guo likes the way the prime minister makes an effort to talk to people and always smiles.
On the other hand she says Labor leader Bill Shorten is a "bit boring".
Mr Turnbull received the rockstar treatment as he walked along the foreshore at Watsons Bay in his eastern Sydney electorate of Wentworth.
Locals basking in the sun and enjoying fish and chips greeted him as if he was an old friend, shaking his hand and asking for selfies.
It was his first visit to his electorate, which takes in some of Sydney's most prestigious suburbs, of the marathon eight-week election campaign.
Mr Turnbull holds the seat with a very comfortable margin of almost 19 per cent.
Former local Liz Dawes, who will be voting in her first Australian election after becoming a citizen, stopped to ask Mr Turnbull for a photo with her seven-month-old son Charles.
She believes Mr Turnbull's business background gives him the edge over Mr Shorten and his union credentials.
"I just feel he's got a bit more commercial acumen given his background."
After addressing media beneath Robertson Park's iconic fig tree, Mr Turnbull approached a young family sitting nearby to introduce himself, and pass on some local knowledge to their young son Jasper.
"I used to play in this park when I was their age," he said, pointing to the couple's children.
"In fact, I used to climb in that tree. Don't fall out, that's the main thing."
