CENTENARY RACE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 90, 17 April 1934, Page 11

CENTENARY RACE.

PILOT SURVEYS ROUTE. WEALTHY YOUNG AUSTRALIAN HEAVY COST OF FLIGHT. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, April 13. Sydney lias had a visitor this week who ia able to discourse pleasantly and instructively about aviation in general and the Melbourne Centenary race in particular. Mr. Bernard Rubin (popularly known as "Benny") reached Mascot by 'plane this week, having started from Croydon on March 22. The time taken on the journey shows that Mr. Rubin and his companion, Mr. Ken Walker, were in no hurry to get here. They have been following the course already mapped out for the Centenary race, and making themselves familiar with its special features. The Leopard Motn

monoplane in which they flew here does about 125 miles per hour, cruising speed, with a maximum of 150 m.p.h. But Mr. Rubin, who proposes to enter for the race, is having a Comet machine specially built for him which will be very much faster. Three Days From England. Mr. Rubin declines to give any particulars about his new 'plane. But he believes that the winner of the race will need to reach Melbourne in three days from England—a view that is in keeping with the opinion expressed by Sir Charles Kingsford Smith and many British and American flyers. _ Mr. Rubin tells us that the great race is the principal topic of discussion in all the aviation centres and the principal clubs at Home, and he thinks that the entries will for the most part come not from construction companies, but from individual flyers who will send in their names in a thoroughly "sporting" spirit. Ol course, the winner of the first P (£10,000) will be able to recoup hi'nseli for his outlay. For the others, it will be all expense and no profit, and m Mr. Rubin's opinion the cost to each competitor will be about £7000, figures, with the added risk ought one would think, to deter anybody not leally in earnest about flying. For there s no doubt that the element of risk is always obtruding itself in the air even in such leisurely voyaging as Rubin and his companion have induced i . •When they were coming across the Timor Sea, and were in sl , g . q Australian coast, one of the tanks faile and the engine cut out, and for « ™ or so they were in imminent penl of

crashing. . , . ■ But with machines built simply for ■peed, and flying up to 2a mi P hour, the risks will be vastly intensify . It is probable that difficulties will arise when the American machines are called upon to conform to the British and European standard of stdblllt ? security, which does not operate in the United States. There apparently, a machine is "airworthy so on will fly, and the onty proof of insecuiity is crashing. 4 —

Career as Racing Motorist. But Mr. Rubin and his views on this subject should be particularly interesting to Australians just now, because he is "one of ourselves." He was born in Melbourne in 1890 —the son of Mr. Mark Rubin, a wealthy pearl dealer. He was taken to England when six years old, and grew up there. He went to Rugby, and when the war broke out he enlisted and served with the R.F.A. in France for three years. He was wounded so severely that for three years he could not walk; and this misfortune naturally turned his attention to motoring, and so to aviation. He became an expert motor driver, was for several years a member of the Beatley racing team, and in 1928 lie won a 24 hours' motor race. Meantime he had bought properties in Australia and with his brother, he owns Northampton Dawns, a large sheep station in Western Queensland. His brother Harold usually attends to the family interests in London, and "Benny" Rubin—in the intervals of motor racing and big game shooting in India or. Africa—visits his possessions in Australia. He was here in 1921 and again in 1932, inspecting his holdings in Queensland and the Northern Territory; and it was on this last occasion that he started out on his first long air trip with "Scotty" Allan. When the 'plane reachcd Brisbane, it was overweighted, and Rubin, as a superfluous passenger, was put off. He protested vigorously, but he was very fortunate, for this was the 'plane that came to grief at Alor Star, in the tiagic "crash" which inflictcd on Colonel Brinsmead, our Director of Aviation, the injury from which he never recovered.

But accidents do not seem to affect Rubin, who is typically Australian, on his fearlessness and reckless love of adventure. This "spectacular sporting Croesus" is very much in earnest about the centenary race, and if money and daring combined can win the prize, Australia's "flying millionaire" has a chance second to none.