Day 4 - 2026-05-10 - Around Marree

I started this very cold morning with walk to the dry salt pan lake on the edge of town. Enroute, I had a chat with a local about the 2025/26 big wet isolating Marree for over a month in summer. The high cost of petrol and the lack of tourists due to the road closure is also noticeable. Being Mother’s Day, we had an enjoyable family call with our sons in Coogee and California. We decided the signal would travel a long way for this call.

4.1 Marree Airconditioned Roadhouse - “The One Stop Shop for Travellers”

After a leisurely breakfast we had a slow walk around the town of Marree, looking at many of the historic artifacts.

Marree has been located on the major outback’s transport routes for over 150 years, being the Birdsville & Oodnadatta Track, the 1888-1980 Ghan railway to Alice Springs and the Afghan cameleer’s Camel Train. The last commercial camel train used to deliver mail in outback Australia completed its run in December 1925.

4.3 Koops the Cobbler still runs a business out of Marree

4.4 Sign on the road outside Marree - The Birdsville Track was closed due to flooding

4.5 1950s Austin Loadstar truck (produced 1949-1955) - 6 cylinder petrol - Marree, SthAust

4.6 Camel Sundial - Marree, SthAust

4.7 Last Railway Locomotive from 1980 - Marree Railway Station

We spent some time in the Tom Kruse Museum, in the Marree Hotel. The collection includes hundreds of photographs, documents and memorabilia from Kruse’s Marree to Birdsville mail run (1936 - 1957).

Tom Kruse’s Mail Run: Kruse came to fame in the Shell Oil sponsored 1954 documentary, “The Back of Beyond”, showing a “typical” outback mail run. The film won the 1954 Venice Biennale, Grand Prix Assoluto. In 1955, Kruse was bestowed an MBE by Queen Elizabeth for his services to delivery of the Royal Mail.
Each trip of 523km took about two weeks and Kruse regularly had to manage break-downs, flooding creeks and rivers, and getting bogged in desert dunes. When he sold the business in 1957, he abandon his Leyland Badger Truck at Pandi Pandi Station, near Birdsville in 1957 (now on display in National Motor Museum in Birdwood in Adelaide Hill). The 4WD ex-army truck on display opposite the Marree Hotel was used by Tom in subsequent haulage and contracting work around Marree.

4.8 Tom Kruse’s ex-army 4WD truck, which replaced his famous mail Leyland Badger Truck

4.9 The start of the postcard’s 32 day journey from Marree to California

4.10 Paul and Karen on our morning walk around Marree

4.11 An abandoned school bus in Marree

On the walk we come upon an old truck with the insignia D.E. Scobie, Allandale Station, Oodnadatta.

D.E. Scobie - 1930s Pastoralist : Dave Scobie was a prominent outback pastoralist in the 1930s, who owned and operated Allandale Station, a 1,637-square-mile property located roughly 20 km south-east of Oodnadatta. The Scobie family played a significant role in the history and settlement of the far north and outback regions of South Australia, and Dave Scobie’s tenure at Allandale is well-documented in early historical records.

4.12 1940s Chevy Truck - “D.E. Scobie, Allandale Station, Oodnadatta”

4.13 The last train was in 1980. Marree was the changes station from the standard guage to the narrow guage trains and carriages

4.14 The narrow guage railway line from Marree to Alice Springs - it closed in 1980

4.15 Marree is the end of the bitument and the start of the dirt road when travelling north

4.16 Lake Eyre Yacht Club - established April 1, 2000

4.17 Marree - evidence of the recent summer floods

4.18 Marree Hotel - built in 1905 on the original site on previous 1876 hotel