QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia, inducted into the QUT Hall of Fame, founder and principal of one of Australia’s foremost building and construction companies – some of the story of the man behind the framework of Queensland is told by Robin Kleinschmidt. The four year old boy who in 1945 near the end of World War II fled his war-menaced home in Germany with his mother and two brothers could have little imagined that these achievements and distinctions lay ahead of him on the opposite side of the world. Walter’s father was a well known journalist in Breslau, formerly the capital of Silesia and now the Polish city of Wroclaw. Called up into the German army late in the Second World War, he knew that defeat at the hands of the advancing Russian Walter Sommer oam

On his return to Australia, Walter applied his passion for training to his own development, spending 12 years of part-time study in building and construction management, law, commerce and arbitration, developing a diverse spread of relevant understanding and knowledge. In Queensland he became one of an elite group of Grade I arbitrators. Back in Sydney, he was appointed the Operations Manager (NSW) for A V Jennings Constructions, and then moved to the Northern Territory as General Superintendent for the construction of the entire town of Gove, the service centre for the new bauxite industry. All the accommodation, health services, the school and administration buildings had to be constructed on a new and remote site. Returning south, he was caught up in financial catastrophe when the parent company of the firm

armies was inevitable, and instructed his wife to take their three children and flee west. He was killed in the last weeks of the war, but she had obeyed his instructions, taking with her their three sons and little more than the clothes they wore. They found a single room beside the cow shed on a north German farm. Ten years later, Germany was well on the road to recovery and Walter began

he was working for in Brisbane went into liquidation in 1974. He turned disaster into advantage, when he and four work colleagues established their own company, Sommer and Staff. In the difficult tendering climate of 1974 they were fortunate to win their first construction contract to complete a project of the failed company. Sommer and Staff undertook contracts in remote locations such as Aurukun, the Torres Strait, the Bowen Basin and the Whitsunday Islands.

an apprenticeship as a mason. Two years into the apprenticeship, the family emigrated to Australia. Walter had already learned skills in bricklaying, plastering, reinforcing, framework and concreting. In Sydney he sought to complete his trade qualifications but, after a false start in his original trade of bricklaying, he accepted that he would be better served by becoming a carpenter and joiner. The advice came from Harry Seidler, who was to become one of Australia’s leading architects. When Walter transferred to a carpentry and joinery apprenticeship, the other building skills he had learned in Germany so impressed his new employer that in his third year he was made foreman of the joinery workshop, and by 21 was the foreman for the construction of a million- dollar maintenance workshop and office project at Pyrmont. Three years spent on Bougainville constructing housing and industrial buildings for the New Guinea Biological Foundation set the course of his life in several ways. There he met his future wife Isobel, and he also recognised the importance and power of training. Charged with training the locals on the projects, he adapted the curriculum which he had studied at North Sydney TAFE to gain Foreman Carpenter Clerk of Works qualifications, and found real satisfaction in the enthusiasm and growth of the workers as they gained new skills.

Seven early warning stations off the Queensland coast were refurbished, and work in the South Pacific included the hotel and convention centre on Kiribati. Shipping materials and workers to such remote locations demanded the meticulous planning which became a trademark of the company. Over the past 38 years, Sommer and Staff has developed into a large, stable and highly-regarded construction group, with a reputation for close working relationships with clients, sophisticated management techniques and strategies, and high quality workmanship. It is committed to working closely with clients to provide optimum service, and to team work and staff involvement. As well as extensive work in all parts of Queensland it has successfully undertaken large projects in Papua New Guinea, the South Pacific islands and South East Asia. The firm has been responsible for new hospitals and health units in the Redlands, on the Gold Coast, at Mornington Island, and in Maryborough. Community facilities and hospitality venues have been built in places as widely separated as Mt Isa, Mackay, Gympie, Logan and Thursday Island.

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