Crocodile Dundee Walkabout Hotel, McKinlay

As usual our last night in Mount Isa we went out for dinner. This time is was a visit to the Mount Isa Irish Club. The meal was pretty good but my main fascination was to why an Irish Club in Mount Isa would have a Melbourne tram inside the building, featuring as it's Tram Stop Cafe?? 

Mount Isa Mine at night

Tram Stop Cafe

Next morning it was off to McKinlay. McKinlay was named after the Australian explorer John McKinlay who passed through the area in 1862 during his epic travels from Adelaide to the Gulf of Carpentaria in search of the ill-fated explorers Burke and Wills. 

The local police station lock up
 - although it's not used as it doesn't comply with standards

Queensland's smallest library - used as the tour office in the movie

This building has had many uses included being a Pool Hall

We decided to have a couple of nights at the Walkabout Creek Hotel which was featured in the Crocodile Dundee movies starring Paul Hogan.  With a population of only 20 there is not much to see in this little village but there is a lot of history. The new owners of two years have done a lot to give the tourists a real Crocodile Dundee feel. Only recently they were contacted by the personal assistant of John Cornell "Strep" who in the past was Paul Hogans manager to see if the hotel would like all the artefacts from the sets from the pub scenes of the first two movies. Of course the pub owners jumped at the chance. John Cornell had kept all the paraphernalia in a storage unit for 30 years and had decided it was time for others to enjoy it.

Walkabout Creek Hotel

A replica of the vehicle they used in the movie

The actual bar, bottles, barrel, boar's head and swizzle sticks
 used in the first two Crocodile Dundee movies. 

Then whilst talking to the pub owner he asked if we would like to jump in his car and go for a drive around this tiny in size but big in history village.  Of course we jumped at the chance. Prior to being featured in the movies the pub was called the Federal Hotel, but when the movies became so popular there was a name change. The pub was also originally down the what was then the main road but when it needed to be re stumped it was moved onto the now highway. From what I could tell it certainly does get a lot of visitors dropping in to checkout this Aussie Icon.

The once main street of  McKinlay

We also went for a drive up the road (80 kms) to another interesting pub,The Blue Heeler Pub. It's literally a pub in the middle of nowhere. But this pub has an interesting history as it is said to be where the famous Banjo Patterson wrote the iconic Australian song Waltzing Matilda.

Kynuna Blue Heeler Pub

The walls and ceiling of the main bar area re covered in names.
The earliest I could see was 1994

During our last night we had quite a lot of rain and we were greeted by a bit of flooding at our front door when we woke up. Oh well it's not the first time I've been flooded as I was a lot back in my tent camping days.

Here come the clouds

Our little lake we woke to. 

It's very flat flat land out here, and a lot of sky

More interesting landscape - well the clouds are at least