He published a quartet of books on Australian character: Wowsers (1968), Knockers (1972), Sports (1973), and Ratbags (1979), and many works of history on popular subjects ranging from wine, to sport, to retailing, and including an unfashionably critical study of the Australian outlaw Ned Kelly, Saint Ned (1980).

His pioneering works of Australian sports history included The Paddock That Grew (1962) on the Melbourne Cricket Ground, which has now seen several editions and updates.

Other publications included The Melbourne I Remember (2004) and Moonee Ponds to Broadway (2006), a study of one of his friends and a fellow Melburnian, the satirist Barry Humphries.

In 1967, he became founding secretary of the Anti-Football League, a tongue-in-cheek organisation that pokes fun at the Australian rules football obsession.

[6] On 11 October 2013, Dunstan was posthumously inducted into the Melbourne Press Club's Victorian Media Hall of Fame.