'It's always a talking point'

New owners snap up Crocodile Dundee pub

- Joe Hinchliffe

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 T-shirts 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 on to the dancefloor.

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 movie. 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.