Lang Walker thrived in a property industry in which he – better than most – read the signs of change and moved ahead of them.

Turning his family excavation business into a residential development business, selling his listed Walker Corp to rival Australand in 1999 ahead of the dotcom crash, and repeating the trick seven years later when he sold Mirvac $1.1 billion of assets months before the global financial crisis hit were hallmark pivots of the developer who died over the weekend.