Walkabout Creek Hotel, McKinlay, Qld

 

So Anyhow*, probably no-one in the history of Australia melded a public career around script-written one-liners more than Paul Hogan. 

 He was painting the Harbour Bridge when an appearance on an alleged talent show in 1971 led to him getting his own gig on Channel 7 and then 9. 

 Then a mate of mine, Paul McKay at Hertz Walpole Advertising had the idea to have him front a campaign for a new brand of Rothmans cigarettes being targeted at arch rivals Phillip Morris’s market leading brand, Malboro. 

 The catch phrase was simply “Anyhow, have a Winfield” and it caught on like a struck Redhead in Mitchell Grass. Within months Rothmans were selling a million sticks of Winnies Red a day (at around 40 cents each!) and the Malboro Man (whose on-screen actor died of lung cancer) was in the shade. 

Hoges was on his way. One of the early Winfield TV adverts featured the Sydney Symphony Orchestra which springs into action when Hogan turns to the conductor and says, “Let her rip, Boris, old son.”  Now two phrases were his and Hogan was recruited to be the face of Australian Tourism and soon 

“Put another shrimp on the barbie” became the third arrow in his one-liner quiver but the fourth came later with the release of his first feature film. Fosters Beer recruited him and one of their ads had Hogan in London being asked by a Pom if he knew the way to Cockfosters. Hogan looks confused and just tells him, “Drink it warm mate.” 

 Paul Hogan, who’d started out bullshitting that his birth place was Lightning Ridge when it was actually suburban Sydney had never seen a crocodile up close and dangerous but that didn't stop him becoming Mick “Crocodile” Dundee in a film which he co-wrote. 

He’d never caught and killed a shark but his hat still had a band of (pretend) shark teeth. And he’d never thrown a knife or used one in anger or for survival but that didn't stop him delivering his most memorable line of all. 

 I’m thinking of Hoges as Crocodile Dundee as I head northwest up the Landsborough Highway out of Kynuna after a sherbert at the Blue Heeler, for the squirt up to the pub at McKinlay, just short of halfway to Cloncurry. 

 It’s now known as the Walkabout Creek, but that’s only recent, and it didn't use to be up on the Landsborough Highway either. 

 In 1985 when it was still the “Federal Hotel” and it was around the corner and a coupla blocks down on Middleton St – behind the petrol bowser that’s still standing like some headstone for a deceased estate - it was taken over by Hoges and his film company and for a few weeks it was supposedly in the Northern Territory and in the middle of croc territory. 

 The film they were shooting was Crocodile Dundee with the man himself in the driving seat and American Linda Kozlowski as his co-star. They found true love on the set at McKinlay, married in 1990 - after he split with his first wife in one of the truly ugly celeb bust-ups - had a kid to add to his previous 5 and lived happily ever after. Well at least until ‘irreconcilable differences’ chucked a spanner in donk of this one too. 

 Anyhow, they used the existing façade of the hotel for the externals but constructed their own bar in a large shed out the back for the internal pub shots. 

 Sign on the door says it’ll be open at 5.00pm and that’s still 2 hours away so I check out the town (population 18) and the camera angles (promising but problematic) and then ring the number on the front door of the cop shop. A woman in the paddock at the back who’s teaching a young girl to ride a pony picks up her mobile and tells me to come around. I tell her how I’d like to camp across from the pub beside the ‘No Camping’ signs so I can get some night shots and of course she reckons that’s not a problem, just keep back so the road trains don't squash me, and then it’s back to have a siesta in the disused post-office. 

 The hotel’s doors open a bit early and I’m welcomed into the pub by a bushy beard, standard monotone faded blue country work shirt and a smile. 

 In 2013 Frank took 6 weeks break from mine work at Biloela and hit the dirt with his wife, Deb and mid-way they through got to Uluru where they had a decent time but the weather wasn't promising. 

 “From Alice Springs we were headed to Boulia and rain was supposed to be on the way so we left a few days early and originally we were going to spend 2 days in Boulia with friends but we were now 4 days early and I thought, my fuckin’ marriage ain’t going to survive me being with my drunken mate in Boulia for 4 days so we headed north and ended at the Curry (Cloncurry) and we stayed there and we were looking at the map and Deb said the Crocodile Dundee pub is on our way and you’ve been there and I haven’t and anyway she kept going on about it and it never ticked any boxes for me but she kept pestering me so we headed south and walked in here and looked at all the shit on the walls and there wasn't a bastard in here, like no-one and we were talking away and figured we needed a drink so we’re singing out and tapping on the bar trying to rouse someone from out the back and eventually this bloke emerges and we buy a drink off him and he gives me my change and he disappears and then someone else comes in and the same thing happens, they look around and then start calling out and they sit down beside us and we’re only half way through our schooners but I figure I’d better get another one while he’s here because we might never see him again, so this other bloke walks in and asks us, how do you book a caravan site here and I said good luck with that we’re struggling to get a fucking drink.” 

 (Psst: There’re not many pauses when Frank cranks up – not too many spaces for commas let alone full-stops and paragraphs.)

 “Anyway we had 2 beers and left. And down the road a bit Deb says to me, ‘I could’ve done a better job than tha,’t and that sort of got us laughing and thinking coz we never had any plans to buy any sort of business. Soy we stayed at the Hamilton Channels that night and then the next day at Boulia Deb googles the pub and says,’ hey that pub’s for sale’ and so we talked with my mate John who used to own the Mungerannie Hotel south of Birdsville on the way to Marree. And he said he knew a shit load of people who wanted to buy it but no-one wanted to loan money to anyone to buy a timber pub in the middle of nowhere. Anyway I went back to work after the 6 weeks off and I went straight on the night shift and I did two shifts and I came home and I said to Deb I’m not doing this shit anymore. So the pub became option A. We had a heap of trouble raising the money.. I’ve been with Westpac since I was at school and they didn't even give me an interview for a loan. Pricks didn't even have the balls or the manners to tell me no to my face!” Took about 8 months from that fateful visit to them walking in as owners and there wasn't a whole lot of stuff to do to get it how they wanted, except one aspect.” 

 Deb, in faded green, has joined us and chimes in: 

“The bloke we bought it off was a decent person but he’d had it for 27 years, and he was over it. Just over the life and the town.” 

 This fella had bought it about 18 months after the film had been shot from a bloke who, well, from a bloke who probably wished he’d been able to put 1986 back in the VCR and replay it. See, the film’s production company’s cash flow was at a low ebb so they made the publican an offer: 

 “The story is that they suggested to the bloke who owned the pub that rather than a flat fee for taking over his hotel for 6 weeks, they’d cut him in on a percentage of the profits. So he looked at them and just said, “Gamble my money on an Australian Film? Are you fucking kidding? No I’ll just take the flat fee.”

 Crocodile Dundee went on to gross $328,000,000 from a production budget of $8.8M. A deal of just 0.05% of that would’ve returned $164,000 compared to a grand a day for 6 weeks which is $42,000. It was just on 8 years after this bloke sold the place to the bloke who sold it to Frank and Deb that the hotel was moved. 

 “They needed to restump it, the thing was sinking and the foundations were shot but they couldn't get under it to do the job it without tunnelling under it so they got a crowd out from Roma and the bloke who owned the pub also owned two empty blocks up here on the main road and he thought well if I’m going to lift it I might as well shift it. So they hoisted it up and brought it down here. Easy.” 

 The film-set bar out the back had been removed by the production company, as had the various props like the bottles on the faux bar’s walls and some motor vehicles. 

Paul Hogan’s best mate, manager and off-sider was Paul “Strop” Cornell who was also a producer of the movie. 

 “Strop’s PA rang me and said they’d donated a heap of smaller stuff to the Aust Film Academy but she’d asked Strop what he was going to do with the truck and Cornell told her to ring the pub and see if we wanted it. If we paid the freight, we could have it so we organised to have it brought up and got it running. Usually it’s out the front of the pub but with Covid we cant keep the thing cleaned properly.” 

 So during the plague, it’s parked down the back of the town, out of sight. 

 “Anyway about 8 months later she rings me again and tells me that the Film Academy hasn't got room for the old bar, do I want it? They’ve even still got all the booze bottles that were on the shelves in the movie. Same deal. I say ‘fuck yea’h, so we organised it again and now it’s out the back. Wanna see it?” 

 Deb’s got the bar under control – two people have come in and are suitably spaced – so we head out the back where the old bar is behind wire mesh. In the old normal, punters could get in there and get a photo in return for a donation to the RFDS but for now it’s off-limits. Frank, though, pulls the screen back and heads in. He poses up for the camera and yes, he has tried the contents of one prop booze bottle in the cabinet behind the bar and no, he’s not having a second taste! 

Back out front , Deb’s cleaning the knife. A pair of young fellas from down around Coleambally have rocked up. They’re on a slow pub crawl to Darwin and want to get a shot of themselves next to the cut-out of Hogan/Dundee doing his famous routine. The knife’s the same as one Dundee waves at the faces of the hoods in New York, but different to the knife he throws in the movie. “The props department fucked up. It’s supposed to be all just one knife but the one he waves and the one he throws have different handles if you look closely. It’s an 18 inch Bowie knife.” 

 One of the Colly kids wants to know what David Bowie did to get a knife named after himself. I think he’s fair dinkum. Frank catches my eye, his mouth curls like a drying gumleaf and his head shakes imperceptibly. They take turns standing beside the cutout of Hogan as Dundee, hiding the knife behind their backs, sneering ‘that’s not a knife’, then pulling out the weapon, looking and pointing it at their mate and uttering the punch line, “this is a knife.” 

 In these days of Covid, each time the knife, ‘which has never been sharpened,” changes hands Deb’s obliged to clean it. Everyone in the bar has a shot except Sue, who’s fronted and who’s already performed the ritual. She’s an ecologist and makes a comment on my drinking red wine out here in red dirt country. I explain that drinking beer forces me out of my tent too much during the night and then I tell her about the Canadian woman behind the bar in Eromanga a couple of days earlier who’d told me I had to leave the pub if I didn't drink a glass every half hour.  

So Sue swaps me a yarn about heading into the pub at Caiguna on cutout night after two weeks on the Nullabor trapping and tagging native animals: 

 “I said to the publican, ‘do you have a bottle of red wine I can give these guys to thank them,’ and he said, ‘no, but I’ve got a cask’ and I go, ‘ah, no, probably not, was looking for something just a bit more special.’ And he says, ‘hang on a bit, I might have a bottle out the back under the old staircase.’ So he comes back with this bottle and asks me if this is okay and I don't drink red wine so I say okay and ask him how much and he doesn't know so he says ‘how’s 20 bucks soun’d and I say ‘okay’. So that night around the campfire I tell em I’ve got a bottle of wine and they crack it and fill their cups and, wow this is bloody good sue, thanks. So I kept the bottle and took it back to the office and it had a serial number on it and so I googled it. It was Hill of Grace and it costs $250. He’d inherited it when he took over the pub a couple of weeks earlier and didn't have a clue what it was!” 

 Hill of Grace ….. now that’s a drop I reckon I could easily drink a glass of every half hour. Might ask Madame Cunuck if she has a cask of that next time I’m in Eromanga. 

 Like in all places, Covid’s been a game changer out here. The two permanent backpacker staff have gone and Frank and Deb are doing it all on their own and with the post office closed down across the road, they’ve taken over that as well. Deb sorts the incoming each morning and Frank spreads the joy. His mail run alternates between daily runs of 100kms and 300kms and the pub opens when he gets back. Today the 300 clicks went a bit faster than usual and besides, posting 5.00pm means they can open earlier, 

“Opening even 5 minutes later than advertised is a customer killer.” 

 But there’re 8 beers on tap. A schooner’ll only set you back $6.30 and stubbies start at an even $5.00. A far cry from the prices I’ve been paying at some of the places further south. And damn reasonable when the freight to get the stuff here is 5 bucks on every slab and $25 on every keg. 

 The solid roof accommodation out the back is a line of single dongas running at $88.00 a night, shared amenities, $121.00 with your own ensuite. Way down the back where the old pub used to be there’re nine more rooms mainly used by work crews and contractors. There’s powered and unpowered camping sites and it’ll cost you $12.00 to throw your swag or tent and use the showers and toilets but push enough money across the bar and your squat might just be a bit cheaper. 

- - - - - - - - - - - -

 One hundred and twenty years before Paul Hogan uttered his celluloid “That’s not a knife …… this is a knife” lines, a trio of real bushmen from a larger party that’d been exploring the area around what’s now Kakadu in the NT, came across mouth of a river that was ‘swarming with alligators’. 

 This was the East Alligator River and crossing it was out of the question. 

 They made camp and next day brought up the rest of the expedition with their horses and dogs. Gaadadju and/or Kunwinjku aboriginals, who’d been shadowing the group, now blocked off any retreat and the leader made the decision to construct a punt – a raft with sides – so they could float back to their base at Escape Cliffs, then the projected site for the capital of South Australia’s Northern Territory. 

 The men cut saplings to make the raft’s skeleton and as Edmund’s the supposed 2IC diarised, 

“….as the bottom was too frail to bear our weight I had some small whipstick saplings cut and laid them all over the bottom with one crosswise at short intervals nailed down with horseshoe nails and (placed) some paddings from the packsaddles on them.” 

But the thing wasn't waterproof so they mortised the joins with river mud and then the leader instructed the men to shoot the remaining 10 (some reports say 28) faithful horses. 

 Then they skinned them with their (real) knives and stretched the hides to dry, as others jerked the meat for the cruise buffet. 

 On June 28th the punt, named the “Pioneer”, was ready to go and the 15 men clambered on board with their gear after first shooting the two dogs which had been so loyal and useful to them for the previous 6 months. 

They sailed off with the receding tide and a full-time watch was immediately necessitated to deter the attacks of the (non-fiction) crocs, sharks and swordfish that shadowed the punt, attracted by the rotting horse-flesh which the leader described as ‘nauseous effluvia’. 

 As the horse skins began to rot, the punt began to take more and more water but after 7 days, they rounded Cape Hotham where they encountered some Wulna aborigines fishing in a canoe. They passed them a note and asked them to go ahead and give it to the chief of the Escape Cliffs settlement. With chutzpah infused optimism it read: “On board the Pioneer. Will be at Cliffs in about an hour. Please have dinner ready.” 

 Edmunds again:

 “We arrived soon after 11 a.m. ……Directly the punt touched the beach it literally fell to pieces. It could not have lived another night as sea. We mounted the Cliffs and Dr Millner ordered us a glass of porter each….after another drink I had a smoke, a luxury denied me a long time. Everyone was exceedingly kind.” One of the great sagas of survival had been completed. Perhaps only the survival of Mawson in Antarctica in 1912 after the deaths of his two companions rates more highly in the heroism stakes. ** 

The leader of this expedition, the bloke whose ingenuity and bush skills ensured that none of his men was lost, was the same fella who was the first white to cross the continent south to north and return and live to tell the tale. He was a Scot, John McKinlay and it was in his honour that this village on the Landsborough Highway was named. McKinlay and his party arrived at Escape Cliffs just a few days after the ship sent to bring them back to Sydney, the Beatrice, had sailed north to Batavia. 

It returned a couple of months later they were all on board and headed south. The Bay out from Escape Cliffs, west of Cape Hotham is named Beatrice Bay, in recognition of the role the vessel played.

** As I roll up the tent and pack the sleeping bag, I look across the highway to the Walkabout Creek and as its windows reflect the morning sun, I do my own little bit of reflection on the pub and the township of McKinlay and the forces that brought about their names and their fame.

 Waving a dagger in the faces of three punks in New York to save your wallet? 

 That's not a knife stunt. 

Skinning up to 28 horses and turning their hides into a raft that sails through croc and shark infested waters for a week and saves the lives of 15 men? 

That’s a knife stunt. 

 ** The doctor on board the Beatrice was Belgrave Ninnis who’d graduated from University of St Andrews in Scotland in 1861 and who’d been in Northern Australia since 1864. Back in England in 1887 his wife gave birth to a son who was christened Belgrave Edward Sutton Ninnis who joined the Royal Fusiliers in 1905. 

Five years later he was recruited by Douglas Mawson (who was on a visit to Europe) to oversee 48 sledging dogs obtained in Greenland and to join him in the Australian Antarctic Expedition. In late 1912 in Antarctica Mawson selected Ninnis Jnr and Xavier Mertz to join him and the dogs on the “Far Eastern Party”. On December 14th 1912, Ninnis, aged just 25, was jogging beside his sled dogs when the ice collapsed and he, along with his dogs, sled and most of the provisions, disappeared into a crevasse. And so, in a truly amazing link – one which I’ve never before seen commented upon - the doctor who had helped recuperate all the survivors of one incredible story of survival in our hottest landscape, lost his eponymous son who was part of perhaps this country’s greatest story of life against all odds, in our most freezing territory.