That’s not a pub …
This is a pub.
The watering hole of Mick “Crocodile” Dundee – the Walkabout Creek Hotel – has sold for a “significant six-figure sum”.
Empty nesters Frank and Debbie Wust have snapped up the hotel at McKinley in northern Queensland.
The pub, built in 1900 as the Federal Hotel, shot to fame in Paul Hogan’s hit 1986 film Crocodile Dundee, also starring Linda Kozlowski, John Meillon and David Gulpilil.
Publican Paul Collins is moving on after almost three decades serving patrons, including miners, farmers and a steady stream of tourists and film fans wanting to see for themselves the bar made famous in the film.
And the new owners are keen to maintain the pub’s iconic status.
Frank Wust, a miner at the Callide Mine, 120km south-west of Gladstone, says he first realized the famous hotel could be his on a trip to the Boulia Camel Races.
“We were visiting a friend in Boulia, who previously owned an outback hotel himself, and on the way home we stopped at the Walkabout Creek Hotel and the rest is history,” he says.
“Most people buy Harleys when they have a midlife crisis, but we thought we’d buy an outback pub.”
But the Wusts have not just bought a pub.
Raine & Horne Ingham & Beaches principal Nathan Henderson says the business includes 18 single rooms, a caravan park and two houses, as well as stables and fenced paddocks for horses.
“The pub was moved about a kilometre from its original location about 20 years ago following the redirection of the popular Matilda Highway,” Henderson says.
“The pub was renovated at the time, however the character depicted in the Crocodile Dundee movie was maintained.”