This month, Nobelius Land Surveyors have belatedly celebrated their 25th anniversary.
As with everything this past few years, the original celebrations were scuppered by the pandemic, but this made the celebration all that bit more special when past and present employees were finally able to come together again.
The 25th anniversary event was held at the Deep Creek Golf Club in Pakenham, a place that is special to founding director Rob Nobelius, as he has been president there for 14 years.
The business officially started on July 1, 1996 after Rob had been made redundant from the Gas and Fuel Corporation.
They started off small with just Rob and wife Chris working weekends to make ends meet.
“As in all new businesses, things were tight early on but we plugged through it,” Rob said in a heartfelt speech.
Fast forward a few years and by 2013 Nobelius was a well known and established family business with 12 employees.
Ben, Rob’s son, was only 28 at the time and working for the family business having qualified as a land surveyor at university.
It was at this stage that Rob had a major health scare and Ben took over the directing of the company, a few years earlier than Rob had hoped but Ben seemed to take it all in his stride.
On the celebration night, Ben was next to speak, with his memories of the early days of the business.
“Whilst I was there, against my will in the earliest days, I had no real idea of what was happening financially or even what was normal in a start-up business,” Ben said.
“But what I witnessed was a lot of hard work. Some might call it determination, others insanity but for me at the time it was normal.”
This is where associate director Tim Walker came in. Tim had joined Nobelius a couple of years before, and had become licensed only a few months prior to Ben taking over.
Together they slowly found their feet in taking the company onwards and upwards.
Ben finished his speech with a testimony to the hard work of both his parents.
“Both have shown me firsthand that hard work pays off, and having you all here tonight is a true testament to that. The ultimate reward is to not only create a life worth living for yourself, but to provide that opportunity to others – family, friends and colleagues,” he said.
