Mail Contractors of the Birdsville TrackPrint Page

The monument commemorates the mail contractors of the Birdsville Track who served from 1886 to 1975.

Marree is essentially a railway town and, consequently, has been located not in a place where there are natural advantages but on a flat plain extending north to Lake Eyre and beyond. Its great claim to fame (apart from the fact that it is the southern starting point on the Birdsville Track) is that in 1954 the film Back of Beyond helped turn the local Royal Mail service provider, Tom Kruse, into an outback legend.

The film told how Kruse took the mail and supplies across flooded rivers, over huge sand dunes and through fiercely difficult terrain. It portrayed him as a simple man who handled adversity with dour outback stoicism and was committed, regardless of the cost, to getting supplies to the outlying homesteads.

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