Tom Kruse (mailman)

Esmond Gerald "Tom" Kruse MBE (28 August 1914 – 30 June 2011) was a mail carrier on the Birdsville Track in the border area between South Australia and Queensland.

[2] However, due to the Depression, he "went 'bush'" around 1934 to work in John Penna's haulage business which ran out of Yunta in the mid-north of South Australia.

[2] In 1936 Henry Edgar (Harry) Ding (1907–1976) bought the mail contract from John Penna, and Kruse began his first run on 1 January of that year.

[1] He delivered mail and other supplies including general stores, fuel and medicine to remote stations from Marree in north-west South Australia to Birdsville in far western Queensland, some 325 miles (523 kilometres) away.

[6] Each trip would take two weeks and Kruse regularly had to manage break-downs, flooding creeks and rivers, and getting bogged in desert dunes.

[5] The truck was gifted by Kruse and Valma to the people of Australia and is now on display in the National Motor Museum, at Birdwood in the Adelaide Hills.

There was a second re-enactment in 1999, and in October of that year the Leyland was trucked to a few kilometres out of Birdsville so Kruse could drive it into the township for celebrations.

In 2000 Tom was inducted into the National Transport Hall of Fame in Alice Springs, and in 2003 he was officially recognised as an Outback Legend by Australian Geographic magazine.

The collection includes hundreds of photographs, documents and memorabilia from Kruse's Marree to Birdsville mail run, including a floor board and the original grille from the 1936 'Back of Beyond' Leyland Badger and a signed and framed mailbag used in the production of The Last Mail from Birdsville - the Story of Tom Kruse in 1999.