Dick Dusseldorp

Gerardus Jozef Dusseldorp AO (2 December 1918 – 22 April 2000) was a Dutch engineer and the founder of Civil and Civic, the financing arm of which later emerged as Lend Lease Corporation, one of Australia's largest companies.

Born in Utrecht in the Netherlands in December 1918, Gerardus Dusseldorp was known as Dik as a child, the anglicised version of which stuck with him for the rest of his life. During World War II, as a Dutchman of working age, he was deported to Berlin, to work as forced labour. Returning to the Netherlands, he secured work with a Danish firm building a railway from Copenhagen to Hamburg. In late 1943 he was transported to Kraków, again as forced labour but this time for the Siemens Organisation. In Summer 1944 he escaped and returned again to the Netherlands.

In 1945 he and his brother Hank secured jobs at Bredero's Bouwbedrijf, a Dutch housebuilder established in the 1870s. By 1947 he had been promoted to Construction Manager. In March 1951 Bredero's sent him to Australia to seek out business opportunities: there he established Civil and Civic, the success of which was based on the principle that the designer should be employed by the contractor rather than the other way round. In 1957 he secured the contract to build the podium for the Sydney Opera House and, having established his reputation, built the business into an international concern. He went on to establish a financing arm for Civil and Civic; this emerged as Lend Lease Corporation of which he was Chairman for many years.

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