Tom KrusePrint Page

The portrait bust commemorates Tom Kruse, the outback mailman who delivered mail on the Birdsville track. This was the first of three memorials with the other two to be placed at each end of the Birdsville Track at Marree and Birdsville.

Esmond Gerald (Tom) Kruse MBE (1914 – 2011) was a former mail carrier on the Birdsville Track in the border area between South Australia and Queensland. He became known as the result of John Heyer's 1954 film The Back of Beyond. The year after the film's release in the 1955 New Year Honours, Kruse was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for "services to the community in the outback".

The famous Badger mail truck which delivered more than 7000 letters from all over the world, is now restored and housed permanently at the National Motor Museum, has recently been bequeathed to the people of South Australia.

Inducted into the National Transport Hall of Fame in 2000 at Alice Springs, Kruse has now been officially recognized as an Outback Legend by Australian Geographic, while both he and the Badger were nominated South Australian icons by the National Trust.

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