Mungerannie Hotel

The Mail Runs

In 1883, when the Great Northern Railway terminated at Farina, mail contracts were let for mail stages from Farina to The Peake and Cowarie, and there was a seperate contract from Cowarie to Haddon Downs via Birdsville.

The Birdsville mail contract was to be a fortnightly service, using packhorses or horse drawn vehicles, but in the drought of the 1880s it was to be three years before a mail service got through; the Birdsville Police daily occurrence book records that on 10 April 1886, ‘Mr. Ellon arrived with the first mail coach from Marree with four good horses’.

The journeys were feats of endurance, and the next mail did not get through to Birdsville until 5 months later. In 1889, the Birdsville Police daily occurrence book noted ‘mail arrived by packhorse as rain at Herrgott held up the coach’.

There were changing stations for horses at Clayton, Blazes Well, Kopperamanna, New Well, Mungerannie, Mirra Mitta, Mulka, Mount Gason, Goyder Lagoon, Andrewilla, Pandie Pandie and Birdsville. (Litchfield 1983, p 48)

These stations each provided a de facto post office service for the communities that lived on and around the station.

In early 1884, Mr. J. O’Brien was the stationmaster transferred from Farina to open a Post and Telegraph Office in the then Herrgott Springs railway yard. O’Brien’s home and Post Office were initially in a railway truck. As there were over 1,000 navvies camped within four miles of the township working on the construction of the Great Northern railway; the telegraphic and money order services were constantly in demand. With only small boy delivering messages as his assistant, O’Brien worked up to 20 hours a day, and his customers were a handful:

To describe the letter deliveries on Saturday night is beyond me. Suffice to say that it took three police officers all their time to manage the crowd and the tent was often in danger. The Government provided me with a six chambered revolver and ammunition. (Litchfield 1983, p. 35)

Facilities improved over the years, with the present Post Office and quarters erected in 1891. Marree continued to be the main clearing post office for mail sent up the Birdsville Track for many decades. Further south, a fortnightly mail coach service ran between Farina and Innamincka station from the end of 1878, and the service continued until the 1920s.

The first trip, with a bullock wagon of supplies for properties along the Strzelecki Creek, took five months to reach Innamincka in April 1879, and from 1909 donkeys were used. Camels were used to negotiate shifting sandhills along both tracks when needed. John Patterson held the mail contract from 1913 until the 1920s, and appointed his nephew Arch Burnett to care for the stage coach horses at Tilpiree waterhole. Many travellers on the coach stayed overnight at the homestead in what was a seven day journey (without mishaps) to Innamincka. The route was seriously considered for a rail extension to Innamincka during the first few decades of the twentieth century.

The South Australian Parliament formed a party to investigate the possibility, but their experiences on the Strzelecki Track in 1916 soon dissuaded them from proceeding. Motor vehicles were used early in the 1920s, when the mail contract for the Strzelecki Track was awarded to Scott Napier, who provided a one tonne Model T Ford truck.

Deliveries of mail, supplies and people were all accomplished by the contractors in conditions that put both beast and vehicles to the challenge.

In 1933, the Strzelecki stock route virtually closed when the Engineering and Water Supply Department stopped maintaining the wells and bores along the track. Mail was then delivered via Tibooburra in northwest New South Wales from Broken Hill.

Along the Birdsville Track, the fortnightly mail run from Marree was the only regular freight service up until 1926, when contractors began using motor vehicles, usually a light truck or utility. In July 1936 Harry Ding took up the Birdsville Mail run, supplied with two tons of corrugated iron sheets from the South Australian government. Eight sheets were carried on his five ton truck, as well as up to 22 passengers at a time. The slow process of

Journeys varied from three trips a week in good weather, to sixteen days for one trip. It was no wonder that camels in strings of up to 70 in number were still competing with trucks on the Birdsville Track until the 1930s.

In 1948, Harry Ding handed over the Marree-Birdsville contract to his off-sider Tom Kruse, who continued with the deliveries for nearly 20 years, until the 1960s. The writings of George Farwell established the legend of Tom Kruse, who is now by far the best known of the outback mail drivers. (Farwell 1949, pp. 41-43; Litchfield 1983, pp. 56-60) But he was in fact just one of eight or nine Birdsville mailmen who routinely made epic journeys by truck through seemingly impassable outback conditions from 1926 onward.

Communication along the Birdsville Track was provided by the Flying Doctor Service using the pedal radio developed by Alf Traeger for John Flynn during the 1930s. Harry Ding came to an agreement with Alf Traeger to provide a radio base and Ding purchased transceivers lent to the occupants of Lake Harry, Mungerannie, Mirra Mitta and Mulka stations along the Birdsville Track. Ding’s long distance trucks carried transceivers as well, so it was possible to maintain communication in transit to learn how much rain had fallen ahead, and other local conditions from the stations.

At Marree, long distance telephone services replaced the telegraph in 1931. A local telephone exchange opened in April 1938 with Harry Ding as the sole subscriber. Development of the service was slow, and it was not until 1975 that 20 subscribers were connected. Internet and telephone services have since improved with the result that outback communication is no longer the problem it used to be.

Trucks that were used by Tom Kruse

1916 - Jack Kelly from Duncan and Fraser drove Jack Gaffney and his family home to Birdsville in their new Model T Ford

Some parts of this yarn are from Department for Environment and Heritage, Heritage of the Birdsville and Strzelecki Tracks, Part of the Far North & Far West Region (Region 13) http://www.environment.sa.gov.au/heritage/pdfs/surveys/birdsville/sections_1-2.pdf