Sydney Opera House's Fiftieth Birthday

The Sydney Morning Herald ran a feature magazine on the Sydney Opera House's Fiftieth Birthday recently. Like almost every Sydneysider I had my own tale of connections to it and wrote the following to the SMH, which they chose not to publish so I'm sharing this way.

"As a young and aspiring civil engineering student, I visited the Opera House whilst it was under construction, and it was an inspiration for me to focus on structural engineering as my major – though I never achieved anything remotely comparable! So, I found it rather odd that it took till page 18 of your magazine before there was any mention of Ove Arup and Partners, whose engineering skills allowed Utzon’s concept to become a reality and even stranger that it is reported that only after 50 years will Ove Arup and Peter Hall receive recognition for their achievements at the Opera House. Thirty years on, I had the privilege of working with the late Dr John Nutt, formerly Chairman of Arup Australia, the structural design team leader and one of many Australians who worked on the project to make it happen. They, too, all need to be recognised. And as for Peter Hall, it is utterly shameful that he suffered the vilification he did, and from his own profession at that, and has not, to date, been properly recognised. The exteriors are all Utzon, the interiors are all Peter Hall and every time I sit in the concert hall, I give him a silent tribute of thanks."

I particularly wanted to acknowledge Dr John Nutt who passed away earlier this year. John hired me in 1988 to build an Infrastructure Division in the Sydney Office - an area that Arup had no significant profile. He was my sponsor and backed me, even when things got a quite rough and tough in the industry and in my area of responsibility. He was always a good mentor to me and a person for whom I had the greatest respect. I am proud to have been one of his team and I hope I repaid his belief in me by taking my part of Arup Australia into places, spaces and projects in Infrastructure - especially big roads, trains and boats and planes transport - that they had never been before. So, I owe John an acknowledgement for giving me that chance. Most of us need to have people who believe in us in order to get anywhere in life and our chosen profession and I am grateful for those, like John, who believed in me. I hope that I may have done the same for others.