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Crocodile Dundee's Pub I was still several hundred miles from the coast and, while planning my trip that morning in Mt. Isa, I realized that there were a couple of ways of getting there: the quick way and the interesting way. I chose, of course, the interesting way, which is better known as Route 66 (and even better known as the Matilda Highway). After a few hours of dodging humongous road trains, including a quadruple that was over 200 feet long and never seemed to end, I pulled into the hot and dusty hamlet of McKinlay around 11 a.m.
If you’ve seen the movie “Crocodile Dundee” then you’ve seen McKinlay because the town’s only pub, now called “The Walkabout Creek Hotel,” was used for the bar scene in that movie. (By the way, a “hotel” in Australia, unlike in America, is an older pub with simple and inexpensive accommodations that are usually on the second floor). I enjoy visiting obscure towns where movies were filmed, and in the past few years I’ve been to:
I didn’t see the second Crocodile Dundee movie but, like many Americans, I really enjoyed the first one, so I just had to visit the Walkabout Creek Hotel. Yes, it’s been a few years since the Crocodile Dundee films came out, but I was still expecting to see at least a couple of tourists poking around taking pictures. When I walked into the bar, though, I was surprised to find just a barmaid and a few local guys sitting at the counter drinking beer and watching the horse races on television.
I spent a few minutes looking around the pub, which is pretty much like it was in the movie. The walls are covered with several risqué posters, some candid photos of Paul Hogan taken during the filming and a few pictures of his co-star, Linda Kozlowski, wearing the skimpy-but-oh-so-memorable black thong at the crocodile pond. That thong made a big impression not only on me but also on Hogan, because shortly after he started raking in money from “Crocodile Dundee,” he dumped his Aussie wife of several years and married that Yank, Linda. Last I heard, Paul and Linda were living somewhere in southern California. Crocodile Dundee, apparently, has gone Hollywood.
The pub was interesting but not worth spending $25 on a “Walkabout Creek Hotel” t-shirt. I didn’t buy a beer, either, since it was in the morning and I still had a couple hundred miles of driving ahead of me that day. So after chatting with the friendly folks there (none of whom, unfortunately, looked even remotely like Linda Kozlowski), I got back in the Camry and hit the road as the thermometer topped 95.
Above left: The Walkabout Creek Hotel in McKinlay, made famous in the movie "Crocodile Dundee." Above right: Cheers, mate. Here's the inside. Note the photos of Paul Hogan on the top.
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