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An enormous Bowie knife whirls through the air and thuds into a wooden bar, sending a shudder of excitement through the cluster of men wearing leather hats, blue jeans, flannelette vests and dirty tees carousing in an outback pub.
Bursting through the front door, a man follows the knife, engaged, it seems, in mortal combat with a saltwater crocodile. But the drinkers erupt with laughter as the “mad bugger” – adorned in crocodile teeth and skin – wrangles the stuffed beast to the bar and orders two drinks: “One for me, one for me mate”.
Before the beers are poured, however, the man’s eyes fall upon a woman. Her clean white shirt, flawless skin and Hollywood beauty so incongruous in this bar of rough and boozy blokes. The man pulls his knife from the wall, saunters over, shoots off a wisecrack and, doffing his hat, introduces himself.
“Michael J. ‘Crocodile’ Dundee,” he says, eyes twinkling as he grins, broad and impish, before dragging the blond woman out to the dancefloor.
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So the world was swept off its feet by one of the most iconic characters in the history of Australian cinema in a 1986 film that remains, to this day, the country’s highest-grossing film. And, 39 years later, that pub has entered a new chapter – one that the parties involved no doubt hope will be more successful than the Crocodile Dundee sequels.
On Monday, the Walkabout Creek hotel in Queensland’s Gulf Country town of McKinlay, almost 1,600km north-west of Brisbane, officially changed hands after about three years on the market.
The new owner, 33-year-old cattleman Angus Brodie, knows a thing or two about those Dundee sequels.
He was about eight and auditioned for a role as an extra when Paul Hogan and Co rolled back into town for Crocodile Dundee 3. Surely he was a shoo-in, young Angus reckoned, being a local and all?
But though he would be “bloody disappointed” not to get the call up, in the end Brodie did not miss out on a blockbuster cameo.
“Not many people know about that film,” Brodie says. “Probably for good reason”.
The legacy of the original film, though, remains deeply entwined with the identity of the Walkabout Creek hotel, the people of McKinlay and its surrounding cattle stations.
“It’s something that, you know, I’ve travelled overseas when I was younger and stuff and it’s always a good talking point,” Brodie says. “You can say: ‘Oh yeah, my local pub is out of Crocodile Dundee’ – and that’s globally recognised. You could be in New York or London, you say that, and people are amazed”.
“So, as a local, I suppose, it just adds a little bit of bragging rights to our little community”.
Ruari Elkington, a creative and screen industries lecturer at Queensland University of Technology, says it is not just McKinlay folk for whom Crocodile Dundee would long resonate.
“That is a character who would go on to cast a really, really long shadow, culturally, for Australia,” Elkington says.
“Not just for how we are seen by the rest of the world … but also the idea of Australian film.
“For all those reasons, that moment there in the pub, where we are first introduced to this character, literally clutching a croc as he bellies up to the bar … it’s a pretty iconic moment, in many ways.”
For Elkington, though, the success of Dundee was something of a double-edged Bowie knife.
In its valourising of the outback, he says, the film was central to a portrayal of an Australia that is far from reality for the vast majority of Australians.
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“We cling to the coast,” he says. “So few of us live in this place where this scene is set, so few of us actually visit these pubs, yet it is a big part of our national myth-making.
“In some ways, we’re still trying to shake that off, in terms of our cultural perception in the world, especially in the US, ever since that film was released”.
Then there is the “pretty reductive”, “intensely blokey” nature of that pub scene, with its sense of “claustrophobia” and “underlying menace”.
But Brodie promises that, though the setting looks much the same as in the film, the pub, in reality, is far more diverse and welcoming.
“There’s a little bit less of that,” he laughs, when asked about the film’s bar fights.
“It’s not quite as wild west as in the movie”.
Larger than life characters still frequent the pub, Brodie reckons, nearby station workers and passing jackaroos among them. But also travellers, mingling with local families.
Young families like his own, Brodie says. With wife, Jo Cranney, the pair not only run the pub but also wrangle cattle at a nearby station and two young children, with a third on the way.
“Our clientele, that’s one of the best parts of the pub,” Brodie says. “It’s literally everybody, from every walk of life – which is great – and everyone sits at the bar and has a yarn.
“Everyone’s welcome”.
Perhaps the Walkabout Creek hotel, while retaining its sense of history, has become more modern in its outlook. Perhaps it never was home to such raucous brawlers – which wouldn’t be the only thing the movie made up.
“You’ve gotta go a few hours north of us before you get into saltwater crocodile country,” Brodie says.
“There actually aren’t any crocs here, which is quite ironic, being the famous croc pub”.
