QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

In conversation

It is perhaps fitting that we close this book with a little about the man who saw an unfulfilled need, and whose vision, determination and energy has delivered its publication in the 60th anniversary year of Australia-Germany diplomatic relations; Peter Ludlow managed a chat with the not-so-retiring Detlef Sulzer.

In 1971, Detlef returned to his native Germany where he started work at construction company Hochtief AG. His first six months was spent in the design office so that he would learn the German language again, because his fellow German workers considered him a foreigner! After nine months, he was given the position of Design Project Manager for the reactor building of the nuclear power station Isar–1. Even before it was finished he was given the structural design responsibility for an entire nuclear power station near Hamburg. It was not all work, however, as a free-spirited Yorkshire girl named Carole so distracted Detlef from his drawing-board, hard hat and calculator that they wed in 1978, which was to be not only enduring but also his most fulfilling commitment. As their marriage followed his projects around Germany, two beautiful daughters joined them: Nina, born in Bavaria, and, three years later, Daniela, born in Hessen. All four Sulzers came out to Brisbane in 1983, after Detlef was sent by Hochtief AG, transferring to Thiess Contractors Pty Ltd that same year. He became responsible for the technical co-operation between Hochtief and Thiess and to facilitate the transfer of construction experience to Thiess, over a quarter of a century, until his retirement in 2009. At Thiess he was involved, among other activities, with: • implementation of the incrementally launched bridge construction method; the design and construction of the ‘sun sails’ over Expo’88; tunnel construction, including the submerged tubes for the Sydney Harbour Tunnel and the rail link from Chatswood to Epping; the project conception of a specialty steel project at Gladstone in the 1990s with a ‘Pre- and Bankable Feasibility Study’; establishment and management of Incore Pty Ltd, an integrated concrete repair company; publishing of the Guidelines for Concrete Repair while Chairman of the Australian Concrete Repair Association; developing the Advanced Electronic Blasting Technology then patented worldwide. Detlef Sulzer has been Honorary Consul to Southern Queensland for the Federal Republic of Germany in Brisbane since 2002, but in 2012 ‘passes the baton’ to a younger successor. In that respect, this book is something of a farewell present, both for him and his beloved Carole, and for the thousands of people – Germans, German Queenslanders and Australians – he has served with vigour and honour over many years. • • • • • •

Detlef Sulzer was born in Germany in 1942 during WWII, so early memories were of a devastated post war country, where his family, like all others, lived in very confined conditions with scant resources. When he was 13, his parents were sent on business to the Middle East, so Detlef went to boarding school in Holland.

The school was something of an experiment because it taught only in Dutch and in English, and it wanted to demonstrate that it could teach even those students who were not in command of either language. In Germany Detlef had learned two years of Latin in addition to his native German tongue, but knew not a word of Dutch, nor of English. In the 1930s, the boarding school had been for Jewish children; after the war, American Quakers restarted it for children of high-ranking officers who didn’t want their children to attend a military school. There were a lot of Americans, British, and Dutch students, but only two from Germany – one of them Detlef. He shared a room with three American students, so the English he learned had a very strong American accent. He moved to London to complete his schooling, then sat and passed the entrance examination for Trinity College at the University of Dublin, Ireland, from which he now holds the following degrees: Bachelor of Arts in Economics, Bachelor of Arts in Civil Engineering and Master of Science in Com puter Science and Application. After graduating from Trinity College in 1967, Detlef began work as a junior engineer at a nuclear power station at Dungeness. Its name suggested that it might be situated in Scotland but, to his surprise, it turned out to be a desolate headland on the coast of Kent. It was the first advanced gas-cooled nuclear power station in the world. A year later, he had advanced to the position of Section Chief of the Reactor Pressure Vessel No.2 – a structure that will more than outlast his lifetime! Nuclear energy in the 1960s was considered to be the world’s energy saviour: eliminating the need to burn coal, which at that time was still considered to be as limited a supply on earth as oil is now.

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