Lendlease might be doing the right thing by listening to its owners and calling a strategic withdrawal from its ambition to be a global property developer. But it is hard not to be disappointed at this ebbing of an Australian company with vision in its blood from the start.

Its founder Dick Dusseldorp came from the Netherlands in 1951 and built everything from mass housing in western Sydney, to the Thredbo ski resort, to the base of Sydney Opera House, and Sydney’s 1960s modernist lightweight concrete skyscraper Australia Square with fellow post-war European arrival, architect Harry Seidler.