Not Just a Bunnings Man: The Life and Times of Tom (G.M.) Bunning
Joseph Christensen
UWA Publishing, 2026
Joseph Christensen has produced something rarer than another corporate success story: a genuinely humane portrait of the man behind Australia’s most recognisable hardware name.
Drawing on extensive private and company records, Christensen, a UWA historian with a strong background in archival research, traces Tom Bunning’s remarkable arc from the Depression-era sawmill his father founded, through three and a half gruelling years as a prisoner of the Japanese in Changi, to decades steering Bunnings through the post-war boom and, finally, the shrewdly timed sale of a stake to Wesfarmers that secured the company’s future.
What elevates this above a standard business biography is the way the Changi years are woven into the whole rather than treated as a grim aside. Bunning’s later reputation as a steady, deeply respected leader of his company and of the WA community more broadly reads as inseparable from what he survived, and Christensen handles that connection with evident care rather than sensationalism.
The result is a book as interested in character as in commerce: a study of quiet resilience and unshowy leadership set against the backdrop of one of the great Australian corporate stories of the twentieth century.
For a debut into business biography from a historian better known for maritime and environmental history, it’s an assured piece of work: meticulously researched and clearly written with genuine affection for its subject without tipping into hagiography.
The biography is highly recommended, particularly for anyone interested in Western Australian history, family business or the generation of leaders shaped by wartime captivity. A thoughtful, well-researched addition to Australian business biography.
