By Helen Mann, Yarra Glen & District Living & Learning Centre
Many people are familiar with the story of Tom Kruse, the Birdsville mailman. But did you know there is a local link to this story of the intrepid men of the outback and the battered old Leyland Badger Tom drove relentlessly over the sand dunes?
Before Tom took over the business in 1948, Harry Ding had operated the mail contract between Marree and Birdsville from 1936. Tom, aged 21, was one of his drivers.
During the late 1930s, Harry began looking for a truck that could tackle the sand dunes often up to 50 feet high. Lois Litchfield explains in her book ‘Maree and the Tracks Beyond in Black and White’, Harry eventually “…located three 1924 model XB Thornycroft timber trucks near Healesville. They had five-speed gearboxes, a two-speed auxiliary box behind, and drove through two heavy bogie rear axle assemblies with worm drive.
These units, according to Harry Ding, had driving parts, and a rear suspension that has no equal, even now, though it was near impossible to fit reliable brakes to the four-wheel drives.
In the Birdsville track country, they did not need brakes, and the ones on the front of the Leylands and Diamond T diesels were good enough.
It was quite a job getting the parts he needed from Healesville to the Ding garage at Yunta, South Australia and then adapting these parts to the smaller trucks, but once in they had no further trouble. The tires were about four feet high, giving them good clearance and the lower gearing would allow one wheel revolution per minute.”
Tom Kruse said that “…it made a hell of a difference to the Leyland Badger with the Thorneycroft jazz in behind it, it was twice as strong as what the Leyland was before…in heavy sand, she’d just keep going.”
The truck was abandoned on Pandie Pandie station in 1957 but relocated in 1986. It was restored in the 1990s and is now in the Birdwood Motor Museum northeast of Adelaide.
Though there were a number of trucks used on the run the Leyland Badger was Kruse’s favourite and he considered it the best truck available at the time for the difficult journey.
