Thousands were skill-tested in their home towns in Germany before joining A.J.Jennings in Canberra.

The Department of Interior recruited Johann (Hans) Eberstaller in the late 1950s from a small village in upper Austria for his carpentry skills.

Later he joined a private company building homes in Campbell for public servants and Defence.

Making him a partner from 1960 helped the company accelerate building into the satellite suburbs of Woden Valley and Belconnen. It also built Campbell and Narrabundah high school and the Red Hill primary school.

His son Hans, who is managing director of entertainment and hospitality company Strategic Investments, said a landmark project of 90 residential units in Curtin was risky for the time, given the National Capital Development Commission still envisaged Canberra as a single-dwelling city.

The units were a forerunner of a successful relationship with National Mutual. Other buildings included St Clare's College in Griffith in 1965, the Indian high commission in 1968 in the Red Hill embassy belt and the two-storey Style Arcade shopping mall in 1971 for Manuka.

He built dress-circle homes and apartments in the 1970s in Red Hill, Curtin, Mawson, Pearce, Farrer, Hawker and commercial warehouses and shopfronts in Fyshwick.

In the 1980s he redeveloped sites for what became known as Scala House and Cyprus Court, the first low-storey offices to be constructed in keeping with the original old Canberra heritage look of red brick and terracotta roofs.

Mr Eberstaller said his father, who died of prostate cancer in 2008, had often thought of Austria but never left Canberra.

''When I visited him at building sites, he was sometimes down in the trench shovelling with the others, only to be in trouble later from my mother for still having his office shoes on.''

A newly released industry hardcover book, The Master Builders that built Canberra says the wave of immigrants had a lasting impact on Canberra's building industry.

They included the Nikias family who arrived in 1954, the Bink family who provided concrete products, Notaras family whose patriarch Harry became one of the city's earliest entrepreneurs and the Capezio family who for three generations developed residential and commercial properties across the territory.

Albert Jennings sent two men to Germany to interview and trade-test 2000 young German men. They selected 150 workers who eventually arrived on five ships from Bremerhaven.

Builder Sam DeLorenzo said a wealth of skills and cultures from the Snowy scheme created diversity on building sites.

''While all worked well together, it was the wet days in the lunch sheds where it became interesting with heated discussions and card games that sometimes ended in fisticuffs,'' Mr DeLorenzo said.