Nannup

Distinguished and Famous people from Nannup

🕰️ Kevin Bird

Retired aircraft engineer Kevin Bird settled in Nannup and combined a knowledge of clock mechanisms with a love of timber. The result was a wooden pendulum clock nearly six metres tall, made predominantly from jarrah with other materials used for its face and fittings. Years of work went into a mechanism whose proportions grew from the engineering rather than a desire to make an ordinary mantel clock unusually inconvenient. Originally intended for a civic project, it was assembled on his property when that plan did not proceed. Bird’s work joins the town’s timber identity with patient, highly individual craftsmanship.

🎵 Phaedra Watts

Phaedra Watts helped shape the Nannup Music Festival through programming and festival direction, bringing emerging performers and established artists into a regional setting. Her work also includes supporting opportunities for musicians and contributing to discussion about regional music. Nannup council records acknowledged her Golden WAMi award for outstanding contribution to the industry. The association is practical and sustained: selecting artists, working with volunteers and helping make a small town capable of hosting a much larger musical gathering. It is a reminder that a festival’s character depends on the people assembling the program as well as those performing it.

🪵 Charles and Tom Bunning

Charles and Tom Bunning were directors of the family timber business during its postwar expansion into the Donnelly River district. The company established mills at the Tone and Donnelly rivers as demand for housing timber grew, and developed pre-cut packages for houses. Charles’s background was in engineering and milling, while Tom trained in accountancy; they became joint managing directors in 1956. Expansion had limits: declining native-hardwood stocks and harvesting quotas preceded the mills’ closure in 1978. The Donnelly River connection is the company’s industrial history, including both employment and the pressures on the timber resource, rather than the brothers’ personal residence.