Australian
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Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows the owner of Dulkaninna Station, George Bell, waiting for the mail to arrive by air, and then later with his friend Tom Kruse. The mail aeroplane is shown landing at Dulkaninna. Still photographs show a much younger George, first with his family and then with Tom Kruse when they were young men. Footage of Kruse and Bell being interviewed is intercut with black-and-white shots of a camel train and a photograph of the old mail truck travelling over rough terrain. A voice-over provides narration.

Educational value points

• Dulkaninna Station, situated alongside the Birdsville Track in remote central Australia, covers an area of 2,000 sq km. The Bell family have a long association with the Station. After an artesian bore was sunk, making farming possible, the land was leased by George Bell’s maternal grandfather from 1896 to 1915. A period of severe drought forced later lessees to walk off the Station. George Bell’s father, Dave, applied for the allotment in 1930, during the Great Depression, and moved there in 1932. The lease has remained in the family ever since.

• George Bell, who features in the clip, had lived in the sparsely populated 'outback’ country around the Birdsville Track for more than 60 years at the time the film was made. Bell (1919–) turned 13 on the day he arrived at Dulkaninna, having walked there with his family from Adelaide. His formal education ceased at that time, and he worked on the Station until he was 16, when he went droving. His job was to take cattle from cattle stations in north-east and south-east Queensland along the Birdsville Track to Marree. At 18 he returned to help his father on the Station, which was transferred to him in 1966.

• The camels shown in the clip indicate an important aspect of the history of communications in central Australia. The first camel arrived in Port Adelaide in 1840, but it was not until 1866, when Samuel Stuckey brought out 100 camels and 31 camel handlers from Pakistan, that this history really began. Camel teams helped with the construction of the Overland Telegraph Line and railways. They helped to erect fences, acted as guides for several major expeditions and, until the mid-1920s, were the major means of supplying stations with goods and services.

• The clip refers to the history of Australian postal services, which began in 1809 when the first postmaster of Sydney was appointed. Today services reach the remotest parts of Australia. Mail and other supplies have been delivered to those living along the Birdsville Track since the 1860s. The first government mail service using packhorses and a buggy opened in 1886. It was not until 1922, after the invention of the internal combustion engine, that it was possible to deliver the mail by motorised transport. Since 1970 mail has been transported to remote centres and stations by light aircraft.

• Tom Kruse and George Bell have a close relationship forged over many years, characterised by a laconic Australian humour and a strong sense of mateship that has developed through dealing with the extreme isolation of their existence. The loneliness of life on the Track with only five other families for company made the arrival of the mailman a real social occasion.

• The landscape of the renowned Birdsville Track is shown. The arrival of the railway in Marree and the South Australian Government’s drilling of ten bores at intervals of 50 km between 1890 and 1916 established the Birdsville Track as Australia’s greatest droving route. It stretches from Marree in SA to Birdsville in Qld, a distance of 517 km, over some of the driest, most inhospitable terrain on Earth. Drovers brought great herds of cattle along the route from the Northern Territory, New South Wales and Qld to the nearest railhead at Marree.

• The water pipelines and stock water troughs shown in the clip demonstrate a reliance on the waters derived from the Great Artesian Basin. The Basin is the largest and deepest artesian basin in the world and underlies 23 per cent of the Australian continent. It is 3,000 m deep in places and has been estimated to contain between 9 and 65 cubic km of groundwater.

• The land described in the clip is the country of the Wangkangurru people, who became adept at life in the driest area of Australia by depending on nine wells spaced along a north–south line 100 km long. The wells, known as the mikiri, are all named and children sang songs about where they were and how they came to be there so that they could always find them. The Wangkangurru left the desert in 1901 and walked south to the Bethesda Lutheran Mission at Killalpaninna.

• Esmond Gerald 'Tom’ Kruse became a legend during the time he drove his truck to deliver mail along the Birdsville Track. During the 15 years between 1947 when he bought the Birdsville Mail contract and his final run in 1963, Kruse (1914–) was renowned for always getting the mail through, overcoming floods, dust storms, mechanical breakdowns and the appalling state of the Track. He was first employed to drive the fortnightly service in 1936 when he was 22. He and his wife starred in the 1954 film Back of Beyond, which featured the people and mail service of the Birdsville Track. In 1955 he was awarded an MBE for 'services to the community in the outback’.

This clip starts approximately 24 minutes into the documentary.

This clip shows the owner of Dulkaninna Station, George Bell, waiting for the mail to arrive by air, and then later with his friend Tom Kruse. The mail aeroplane is shown landing at Dulkaninna. Still photographs show a much younger George, first with his family and then with Tom Kruse when they were young men. Footage of Kruse and Bell being interviewed is intercut with black-and-white shots of a camel train and a photograph of the old mail truck travelling over rough terrain. A voiceover provides narration.
Narrator George Bell and his family before him have relied on the Birdsville Track mailman for over a century. Today, the mail for the Birdsville Track is delivered every weekend by air. Australia Post’s ‘flying postman’ serves the remaining five families. It’s part of the longest mail route in the world.

George owns the 2000 sq km Dulkaninna cattle station. He’s seen the mail delivered by camels, trucks and now aircraft. A letter to George from anywhere in Australia costs no more than one posted to a city address. The actual cost of delivering that letter is probably 10 times the normal letter rate, as it was in Tom’s day. Australia Post’s commitment to the mail service is as strong today as it was in 1883 when pack animals were used.

George turns 80 in a day or two. He’s looking forward to seeing Tom on the track again. George Bell arrived at Dulkaninna on his 13th birthday, in the spring of 1932. He’s lived here ever since. He walked from Adelaide with his family. Four years later, in 1936, Tom Kruse turned up as the new Birdsville Track mailman. They’ve been mates ever since.

Tom Kruse Uh, I think I met George I reckon he was only about 15 or 16. The same build and the same smile, and the same manner of speech, if that’s the way of describing it. He hasn’t changed, except in – I did say, 'George, you’ve become richer. Got more money.’ No, good luck to him, anyhow.

George Bell We didn’t (inaudible) them days, and we got bogged a lot of times getting out here. Tom would have got bogged a lot of times. I rode up to him once after a 4 inch rain and he’d lost his shovel and he’s down on his hands and knees raking the dirt away from his car and he’s singing 'I’m in heaven’ when I rolled up behind him, and I said to him, 'Tom, if you’re in heaven, I never want to get there.’