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Now that’s a hotel, says buyer
Paul Hogan, left, at the set-built Walkabout Creek Hotel
THE legendary watering hole of Mick “Crocodile” Dundee has sold to a pair of empty nesters for about $1 million.
The Walkabout Creek Hotel at McKinlay in northern Queensland made famous by the 1986 Australian blockbuster Crocodile Dundee sold yesterday for a “significant six-figure sum” according to Raine & Horne.
Miner Frank Wust, who bought the property with his wife, Debbie, said he inquired about the hotel after venturing off the Matilda Highway for a drink.
“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 said. “Our kids have grown up so we thought we’d have a mid-life crisis.”
Although the hotel’s patrons are mainly passing tourists and miners from BHP’s Cannington operations, the couple said they would keep the pub’s iconic name and cash in on Dundee diehards and film buffs alike.
“All the memorabilia is still there - there’s photos of Paul Hogan and Linda Kozlowski all over the place so we’ll keep it.
“We paid for it so we might as well hang on to it; we’re in more debt than Joe Hockey right now,” he said.
Despite the outback hotel’s place in Australian cinema history, the property took almost four years to find a buyer, selling agent Nathan Henderson said.
“You’ve got to find someone who wants to be out there. There’s nothing there. There is a police station, a roadhouse and an old CWA hall,” he said.
Previous owner and publican Paul Collins purchased the property for $290,000 in 1987, a year after the film was released.
“After 28 years behind the bar, Paul had decided to call time on his stint at the illustrious pub, which was built in 1900 as the Federal Hotel,” Mr Henderson said.
The sale included the 18-room hotel and caravan park as well as two residential houses and stables and paddocks.
The pub that Dundee enters while wrestling a stuffed crocodile was moved about a kilometre from its original location about 20 years ago following the redirection of the Matilda Highway.
Source: The Australian - 25 March 2014
