Sir William Gunn

Giant of the Australian wool industry

William Archer Gunn, grazier and businessman: born Goondiwindi, Queensland 1 February 1914; member, Executive Council, United Graziers Association of Queensland 1944-69, vice-president 1947-51, president 1951-59; member, Australian Wool Growers Council 1947-60, chairman 1955-58; member, Graziers Federal Council of Australia 1950-60, president 1951-54; member, Australian Wool Bureau 1951-63, chairman 1958-63; CMG 1955; KBE 1961; chairman, International Wool Secretariat 1961-73; chairman, Australian Wool Board 1963-72; AC 1990; married 1939 Mary Haydon (died 2002; one son, one daughter, and one daughter deceased); died Brisbane, Queensland 17 April 2003.

William Gunn was a giant of the wool industry during a golden era when Australia "rode the sheep's back" and the country's wool barons were men of great fortune and influence.

Gunn took over his family's flock as a teenager and rose to become one of the most powerful men in Australian agriculture. A dominant figure in the wool industry for more than half a century, in 1970 after a long campaign he persuaded sheep farmers to set a minimum price for their wool, a move that is still bitterly debated by modern-day graziers.

Gunn also presided in 1963 over a steep increase in wool levies, from 10 shillings to two pounds four shillings a bale, introduced to fund a promotion of Australian wool, in a search of new markets. Angry farmers pelted him with eggs and fruit at a subsequent public meeting in Victoria. It was the time of the Profumo scandal in Britain, which was transfixing Australia too. An unruffled Gunn wiped his face, and later observed that, "if anything, I pushed Christine Keeler off the front page". He stubbornly continued his presentation, even as a flour bomb exploded over his suit. "I may lose here, but I'll win in a lot of other places," he vowed at the end of the night.

A fiery, no-nonsense man, with craggy features and a severe centre parting, Gunn relished a good fight. Looking back on his career, he said: "I had to fight the woolgrowers, the selling agents, the buyers and at times my own board." His forceful personality usually prevailed but, as Doug Anthony, a former Queensland politician, said: "He tended to make enemies by being a bit too strong in his proposals."

A larger-than-life personality, he was a commanding physical presence too, 6ft tall and nearly 19 stone. He was known as "Big Bill", because of his massive frame, which was usually draped in a double-breasted woollen suit. Sir Hardy Amies, the Queen's dressmaker, said that Gunn was "a problem" when it came to fittings.

Wool was in Gunn's genes. Born William Archer Gunn in 1914 in the rural Queensland town of Goondiwindi, into the fourth generation of a grazing family, he was – like many sons of aspirational farming folk – sent to Sydney to be educated. At the King's boarding school, he demonstrated his pragmatic approach to life, telling teachers that he would concentrate on shorthand, mathematics and accounting, because Latin and literature would be "of no use" to him in later life. On leaving school in 1932, he went straight back to the bush and, a year later, was in charge of his family's huge Outback ranch and 14,000 sheep.

He rose to hold senior positions in rural organisations, heading the United Graziers Association, the Australian Meat Council and the Graziers' Council of Australia. He sat on the boards of two banks, and chaired industry bodies including the Australian Wool Corporation.

Gunn was the driving force behind a post-war bonanza that saw wool fetch £1 for1lb (Australia still used sterling then). Affluent graziers bought up huge swathes of Outback towns and had the ear of national politicians. His public life was characterised by battles against governments, bureaucracies and wool growers. He fought a shearers' strike, the introduction of synthetics and a failed referendum in 1965 on the wool reserve price, his pet project.

Genial and determined, he was not afraid to take unpopular decisions. He campaigned for years for a minimum "floor price" for wool, arguing that it was the only way to protect growers from overseas cartels. The scheme, introduced in 1970, was administered by the Australian Wool Corporation, which bought up wool that failed to meet the minimum reserve price at auction and sold it later when prices were high.

The system worked well for 20 years and created a boom that was further fuelled by innovative marketing and promotion strategies overseen by Gunn. But falling demand combined with a high reserve price forced its abandonment in 1991, and the industry was left with huge debts and a massive wool stockpile of nearly five million bales that took a decade to clear. Mac Drysdale, a former chairman of the Australian Wool Corporation, said, "Bill Gunn had unbelievable confidence in his point of view and if he believed something was right for the industry, he went and did it and the industry just had to go along."

Lingering resentment from those who disagreed with him was blamed for Gunn's failure to realise his political ambitions. In 1965 he was thwarted in a bid to be preselected for a safe seat for the conservative Country Party in the federal parliament. The Country Party leader, Sir John McEwen, had backed Gunn as his successor, but grassroots members revolted. Politics, Gunn said, was a "dirty business".

His own empire expanded over the years to include interests in prawn fishing, stock-feed manufacturing and cattle farming in Queensland and the Northern Territory. His luck on the land, he said later, "ran out just once".A slump in the value of cattle in 1973 wiped out his personal fortune and forced him to place his pastoral company into receivership. But he picked himself up and rebuilt his business by investing in other farming ventures.

In his later years, Gunn continued to be a powerful voice in the industry. The Federal Agricultural Minister, Warren Truss, said: "The wool industry in Australia today is one of the world's most advanced, partly because of Sir William's efforts."

Kathy Marks