Thomas Haynes was an accountant and businessman, working for mining, railway and engineering companies in increasingly senior capacities. He married Ethel Timmins in 1905 and they had two sons and four daughters. From 1938 to 1939 he was president of the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce, and then junior vice-president of the Associated Chambers of Commerce of Australia in 1940.
In 1922, an association with the British Phosphate Commission led to a visit to Nauru and Ocean Island. The result was his novel Our Daily Bread, which the Australian Dictionary of Biography describes as "an account of political and financial intrigue involving American agents bent on cornering the world's phosphate supply".
