Rescue of yachtsman captures world attention
AFTER finishing school, Les Rub started work at the Toowoomba Foundry as a trainee engineer. Because of nagging back problems, he was transferred to the office.
He left the foundry after 18 years and worked in sales for TT Hardware before becoming manager of the machinery department.
He then had 14 years with Wildman’s Timber as office manager before taking on a similar position with the Rex Burrell Group. His final fulltime position was at Westbrook Engineering where he “looked after the bookwork”.
From a young age, Les was interested in church music. His parents, an aunt and Mrs Parker, the church organist, encouraged him to take on piano and that he did. Then he progressed to the pipe organ under Stanley Hobson at St Luke’s and Walter Emerson at St James’.
Mr Emerson interested Les in building and maintaining church organs, including pipe organs, and together they built some five organs across Queensland. Indeed Les built the one at St Matthew’s Drayton by himself. No doubt an inheritor of the genetics of the very first Rub, Joseph Jacob, who was a supreme craftsman.
Les received a Certificate of Long Service from the Organ Society of Queensland Inc.
One of his proudest moments is not about himself, but about his son Alan.
Alan had started his career as an apprentice at the foundry, but his love of water from his early days at the Milne Bay Aquatic and Fitness Centre, where he loved diving off the high board, led him to pursue a career in the Royal Australian Navy.
In 1997, lone sailor Tony Bullimore, who had been taking part in the Vendée Globe single-handed race, caused an emergency beacon to attract attention after his yacht capsized 2500 kilometres away from the Australian coast in the Southern Ocean.
HMAS Adelaide came to the rescue with one Alan Rub who dived overboard towards a floundering Mr Bullimore to bring him to safety. They teach them well at Milne Bay.
The rescue captured the attention of the international media to which Alan responded, “Just another day’s work. I am surprised by the media hype.”
Leslie Rub has a resume you cannot jump over – writer, author, musician, organist, wood worker, organ maker and much, much more.
He will turn 91 in December and I sense he isn’t finished with yet. His brain and memory are as sharp as a tack and he has a mountain of stories to deliver.
After a couple of hours with Les and his wife Enya, I departed the Ozcare Facility and headed home through Drayton, passing a convoy of huge trucks all bearing the name “RUB.” They’re everywhere!
Six generations on and Joseph Jacob Rub and Christina Rub (Bremensthul) have left an enormous legacy for this beautiful country of ours. Hundreds of gentle, hardworking, community-minded people all calling Drayton home. Leslie Rub is but one of them.