The Man Upstairs

When Meriton’s billionaire owner Harry Triguboff broke ground on his first unit block, it was the beginning of a career that would reshape a city and literally take him to the top.

- Michael Wayne

The city of Sydney before Meriton was a much flatter place. It exists only as a memory now, but Harry Triguboff can’t forget the way it smelled.

In 1963, as the fledgling builder broke ground on his first project – a block of flats in the southern suburb of Tempe – Harry found himself caught between duelling scents. “At the time, the brickworks was up the road at St Peter's,” he recalls. “The smoke used to come my way. I could smell the burning coals.”

Work had stalled due to a drunken foreman, forcing Harry to take charge and finish the job himself. The worksite was on Smith Street, just a few doors down from the Smiths Crisps factory. “So I had two smells, one from the coal and one from the chips,” he says. “Quite different from today.”

And as a result of that project, so too is Sydney. For the 88-year-old Meriton boss, the past is his prologue; the foundation upon which his astronomical success – not to mention some of Sydney’s greatest heights – is built. “That drunk foreman was a blessing,” Harry says. “The new foreman, a very clever, very honest Scotsman, turned out to be the right man. He worked for me for many, many years; we finished that block and the next 300 blocks.”

Those blocks, high and low, have become an integral part of Sydney’s cityscape. At Meriton’s inception, its Managing Director could only look upon the city’s tallest spires from a distance.

“At first I didn’t think I was ready to go any higher,” Harry says. “Once I started with tall buildings, I probably built more than anyone else.”