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. At the age of 15, he enrolled as a marine cadet, with the aim of becoming a captain in the merchant marine. He was found to be color blind when he sought entry into officer training and withdrew from the service. During
World War II, as a
Dutchman of working age, he was deported to
Berlin, to work as forced labor. Returning to the
Netherlands, he secured work with a
Danish firm building a railway from
Copenhagen to
Hamburg. By 1947 he had been promoted to Construction Manager. During the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s he undertook residential housing developments such as Harbour Heights Estate and was a competitor of
Leslie Joseph Hooker and
Hooker's housing developments. 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. Civil & Civic built the first high rise office block,
Caltex House, to be erected in Sydney. He went on to establish a publicly listed financing arm for Civil & Civic. This emerged as
Lendlease of which he was
chairman until his retirement in 1988. To mark his retirement, the shareholders of Lendlease gave him one million new shares, to establish the
Dusseldorp Skills Forum. He initially chaired the Forum before handing over the position to his son, Tjerk, who chairs the Forum to this day. His driving vision for the Forum was that it become a creator of "lighthouse" initiatives that would influence government policy for the benefit of young people, particularly those at the margin who were there through no fault of their own. During the last decade of his life he gained recognition as a practical
philanthropist. ==Honours==