The 10,000 people and 5000 drawings that built our $102 million Opera House

Nobody could quite believe the winning entry for the Sydney Opera House when they saw it for the first time in 1957.

A building of big white shells as a design for a new cultural centre dreamt up in far-off Denmark in 1956 by a young architect Jørn Utzon who’d never completed a major commission in his life.

The sails of the Opera House illuminated with lasers on Friday night to celebrate the building’s 50th anniversary.Credit: Wolter Peeters

Quantity surveyors estimated the design compared to other finalists, would be the “cheapest to build” at a cost of £3.5 million ($7 million) and take only four years to finish. Instead, it cost 14 times that, $102 million (paid for with 86.7 million tickets sold in 469 Opera House lotteries) and took 16 years, four times longer than the original estimate, to complete.

The end product would put Sydney on the international map, and change not just the face of this city, but the faces who inhabit it too.

Sydney Opera House article from the Australian Women’s Weekly from February 20, 1957.

Some of them will be there this weekend when the Opera House opens its doors for the first time in eight years, for a sold-out Open House Weekend, which includes a behind-the-scenes look at the building, as well as performances from some of its resident companies including Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Bell Shakespeare and Opera Australia.

For the first time in four years, John Coburn’s Curtain of the Sun tapestry has come out of storage to be hung in the Joan Sutherland Theatre.

Of the 10,000 people who came from over 90 countries to build it, almost all of them say it still holds a special place in their hearts. Now 50 years since the building opened, moves are afoot to give them greater recognition.

People like Denis O’Mara, who started as a 16-year-old apprentice carpenter with Civil & Civic in 1959, cutting metres of marine plywood for the moulds that made the concrete steps for the podium. Even when he visits today he still tears up with pride.

Former carpenter Denis O’Mara, on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, which he helped build.Credit: James Brickwood

“I had my first illegal drink at the Opera House Christmas party just before I turned 18 and still have the beer stein my workmates gave me,” he recalls.

“In the early ’60’s when the site was basically a dust bowl following the demolition of the old tram sheds and the digging of foundations, we wired together an unofficial harbour pool with some steel sheets near the Man O’War steps and we’d jump, swim or wade in ‘boots and all’ in our work clothes.”

Although he went onto a career in sales and marketing he says those early Opera House memories are treasured. “We all had a sense we were working here on something special and I still feel that today.”

New immigrants such as Elsa Atkin also made a big contribution to this engineering project, which like the Snowy Mountains Scheme before it, became a symbol of multicultural Australia’s accomplishments.

She arrived here from Iraq as Elsa Khamara, and got her first job as architect Jørn Utzon’s personal assistant in 1965. She not only made Utzon’s lunch daily (two boiled eggs) but typed his resignation letter to the NSW government.

Denis O’Mara (with beer stein) in 1960 with workmates at the steps he helped to build at the Sydney Opera House.

“I took it down in shorthand when he said ‘I have no option but to resign’. By then I was nearly in tears, and he called a staff member to take the letter to the minister for public works [William Davis Hughes]...within an hour a car pulled up at the Opera House site with a letter from the minister saying we accept your resignation,” Atkin said.

“It was the most shattering moment, it was like a death in the family. We were all young and enthusiastic and loved working for this man who would light up any room and his marvellous building.”

Atkin, who went on to become the executive director of the National Trust, believes the situation where Utzon was forced to resign because of a dispute with the NSW government over pay, would not happen today.

Former secretary to Jorn Utzon, Elsa Atkin.Credit: Nick Moir

“We’d have lobbyists or marketing people to deal with the politicians – not architects.”

The significant contribution made by everyday Australians has been long overlooked according to Luciano Cardellicchio, senior lecturer in architectural construction at the University of NSW.

Along with fellow Italian Paolo Stracchi, senior lecturer in architectural technology at the University of Sydney, they have carried out a research project to show the Sydney Opera House is not merely a building designed by a Danish architect and engineered by British firm Arup, but also an Australian structure built in the “Australian way.”

They are specifically interested in the local ingenuity and craftsmanship of the Australian contractor, Brisbane-based bridge builders Hornibrook. They were responsible for stage two of the building, constructing the roof sails using techniques the company had used constructing the Story Bridge in Brisbane.

“Every week for six months we went to the State Archives in Kingswood to go through the 5000 drawings that represent the Australian knowledge of this building,” Cardellicchio said.

“We lost count of how many boxes we went through, but we used the drawings, Max Dupain photos and weekly site minutes to reconstruct what the construction site of the Sydney Opera House looked like,” he said.

They now use a virtual reality recreation of the on-site casting yard at Bennelong Point to teach their architecture students how it was built.

Academics Paolo Stracchi and Luciano Cardellicchio with the 3D erection arch they created to help explain to students how the Opera House was built.Credit: Dean Sewell

This process has helped them appreciate the unsung Australian contribution to the building. Cardellicchio even believes thanks to their knowledge gleaned from the project, these days they could build Utzon’s original paraboloid design he submitted to the design competition, not the spherical-shaped version we have today.

“We’ve also used 3D printing to recreate the erection arch which was an Australian invention by Hornibrook that was crucial to the building of the Sydney Opera House,” Stracchi said.

“Anecdotally about 35 per cent of the builders of the sails were Italian concreters who arrived at the Overseas Passenger terminal as migrants and found work across Circular Quay building the Sydney Opera House.

“We are keen to honour them and all the Australians who took part in this project.”

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