Tom Kruse

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. He became known nationally as the result of John Heyer's 1954 film The Back of Beyond. He was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 1955 New Year Honours, "for services to the community in the outback".

Early life Kruse was born at Waterloo in South Australia to Harry (Heinrich) and Ida Kruse. He left school when he was 14 years old, and worked as a casual labourer on local farms. Kruse bought the mail contract in 1947. He sold the contract in 1963.

Kruse worked the Birdsville Track mail run from 1936 to 1957, driving his Leyland Badger truck. Each trip would take two weeks and Kruse regularly had to manage break-downs, flooding creeks and rivers, and getting bogged in desert dunes.

The Leyland Badger Kruse abandoned the truck on Pandie Pandie Station near Birdsville in 1957. A group of enthusiasts led by Neil Weidenbach, with the help of Kruse, fully restored the Badger between 1996 and 1999.

Publicans Phil and Marilyn (Maz) Turner of the iconic Marree Hotel commissioned Ian Doyle, executive producer of 'The Tom Kruse Collection' to curate and with Mark Metzger to build the Tom Kruse Museum in the renamed Tom Kruse Room in the Marree Hotel. 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.

The Tom Kruse Marree bust is now located in the Tom Kruse Room. A letter written by Australian artist Sidney Nolan to Kruse in Marree in 1954 has been added to the display. The Nolans were family friends of the Heyer family. Sidney saw an early release of The Back of Beyond in London and wrote to Kruse letting him know that he enjoyed the production. The letter also said that Sidney Nolan had included a couple of photographs and that he was intending to do some drawings and he would send them at a later date. The Kruse family are not able to locate the photos or the promised drawings. Sidney Nolan met Kruse in Marree in the late 1940s. He accompanied John Heyer on one of his docudrama research trips up the Birdsville Track. He also reconnected with Kruse in Marree when he, his wife Cynthia Nolan and daughter Jinx visited Marree as part of a lengthy Australian family odyssey which took them from Sydney to The Kimberly in the early 1950s.

Kruse died in Adelaide, aged 96, on 30 June 2011.