"After I complimented the tradie's aim, he said 'I used to be that guy. We gotta change.' Then he wandered off eating a sausage roll. That was pretty f***in' rad," she wrote.
Downes' heartwarming post has gone viral, garnering more than 14,000 likes in less than two days and close to 5000 shares.
The Melbourne make-up artist later thanked everyone for the support but also revealed she'd received a bunch of nasty messages claiming the story was made up.
"After commenting on the amount of awful messages I was receiving from some quite pathetic people, I just want to say thank you to all the lovely messages of support I've received," Downes wrote.
"I forget sometimes that really misogynistic toads exist as I'm lucky to be surrounded by some incredible, compassionate men — I'm glad to be reminded that the good outweighs the bad in society."
Downes' story comes a month after SBS released a documentary asking Is Australia Sexist?
Hosted by radio host Yumi Stynes and in partnership with Macquarie University, the documentary also conducted the largest ever survey on attitudes of gender discrimination and sexism.
One particularly damning statistic from the survey was 40 per cent of women aged 18 to 25 admitted they'd experienced some form of sexual harassment on the street in the past 12 months.
In the same Macquarie University survey, 22 per cent of men said they believed women should take wolf whistling as a compliment.
On that same question, 84 per cent of women said they did not see wolf whistling as a compliment.
