Not Just a Bunnings Man by Joseph Christensen

G. M. ‘Tom’ Bunning helped to drive the ascent of Bunnings as one of the great successes of Western Australian private enterprise and a household name nationwide. The youngest son of the company’s founder, and one half of a successful executive partnership with elder brother Charles, Tom joined Bunnings on the eve of the Great Depression and remained with it throughout the long post-war boom, before orchestrating the sale of a stake in the family business to Wesfarmers following the stock market crash of 1987, paving the way for the takeover of Bunnings that occurred after his death in 1991.

Not Just a Bunnings Man charts Tom’s long career as an astute and highly-regarded corporate and community leader, detailing the challenges and triumphs that lay behind the transformation of a local sawmiller and timber supplier into the state’s leading building supplies and hardware retailer. It deals at length with his military service and the three and a half years he spent as a Prisoner of War at Singapore. Drawing on extensive private and company records, Joseph Christensen uncovers the personal side to the Bunnings story, exploring the life and times of one of the most respected industrialists and public figures in twentieth-century Western Australia.

About the Author:

Joseph Christensen is a Lecturer in History at The University of Western Australia, and was formerly a Research Fellow at the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University. He has published widely in the fields of environmental and maritime history, with a focus on fisheries and marine environmental change, and cyclones and other extreme weather events. He has also contributed to a number of publications in Western Australian history, including the Historical Encyclopedia of Western Australia and the centenary history of the University of Western Australia. He is the author of The Game that Counts: Irvine Owen Gaze, Antarctic Adventurer and Airman (2018).

27 Jan 2026
 

Not Just a Bunnings Man: The life and times of Tom (G.M.) Bunning by Joseph Christensen ISBN 9781760803278