The 1953 Australian film classic The Back of Beyond (1954) introduced Tom Kruse and his 1936 Leyland Badger mail truck to a generation of Australians. Most never forgot the extraordinary images of the man and his battered truck doing battle each fortnight with the sand and isolation along the Birdsville Track, outback Australia's toughest mail run.
The 500-kilometre Birdsville Track runs from Marree (formerly Hergott Springs) in northern South Australia to Birdsville in southwest Queensland. Tom Kruse played himself, delivering mail, fuel and supplies to the isolated families along the world famous track. Shot in black and white, The Back of Beyond (1954) remains one of the most critically acclaimed and awarded films ever shot in Australia. It won Best Film at the Venice Film Festival in 1954 as well as many other international awards.
Tom Kruse celebrated his 87th birthday on 28th August 2001. His mail run re-enactment in the fully restored 1936 Leyland Badger mail truck, was the subject of this evocative, colourful and emotional documentary, Last Mail from Birdsville: The Story of Tom Kruse (2001). Kruse said: "I never believed I would ever drive the Badger again".
This film documentary traces the recovery of the badly deteriorated 1936 Leyland Badger truck from the desert near Birdsville in 1986, its painstaking three-year restoration from 1996, and the final mail run re-enactment down the Birdsville Track in 1999. Behind the wheel again after almost forty years, Tom Kruse, star of The Back of Beyond (1954), acts again as a mail carrier, and carried over 7000 letters from well wishers around the world.
More than 120 other vehicles joined the convoy depicted in this documentary following the last mail run re-enactment along the Birdsville Track from Marree in far northern South Australia to Birdsville in southern west Queensland .