From a humble beginning as a rural volunteer ambulance driver at St Marys he became the first Tasmanian president of the organisation in 2011 and his 30-year dedication has been formally acknowledged with one of the country’s highest honours.

Mr Legge has been appointed as a Member of the Order for his service to the community through roles at the state, national and international level with the Red Cross.

While much of the work was from a governance position, Mr Legge has also help to rebuild communities after natural disasters.

Just weeks after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, in which more than 230,000 people were killed, he was on the ground in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Maldives.

“From my personal perspective that would have been the most confronting part of the engagement that I have had with Red Cross,” Mr Legge said.

“You never forget being there and seeing the devastation that the tsunami caused, the enormous loss of life, the hundreds and thousands of people that were left homeless and the vulnerability was enormous. It’s always there in the back of your memory.”

Mr Legge has also been involved with raising funds in Australia after bushfires and other natural disasters and supported work in local communities.

He sat on the board of the Australian Red Cross Blood Service, was the Australian representative with the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, and chaired the Australian Red Cross International Committee.

But the credit for kick-starting his Red Cross volunteering as an ambulance drive lies with Mr Legge’s wife, who was a nurse at the St Marys hospital.

While many experiences during his tenure were memorable, his first day on the job still sticks in his mind.

“I don’t know if we should put this in the newspaper … but our farm was only three or four kilometres from the hospital at St Marys and the chaps at the hospital said ‘you’re on night duty, you may as well take the ambulance home and if you get called out you don’t have to drive to the hospital’ but I thought I would do the right thing and put it in the shed,” Mr Legge said with a laugh.

“At that stage the older ambulances used to have the rotating beacons and I forgot the height of the shed, and just took them straight of the vehicle. That was my first experience driving the ambulance and it took a lot of living down.”

Mr Legge was also a board member of the Australian Superfine Wool Growers' Association, Primary Employees Tasmania and Launceston Church Grammar School.