Extract from ABC News
By Meghan Dansie
Debbie Wust runs the Walkabout Creek Hotel in McKinlay with her husband, Frank. (Meghan Dansie)
It was past midnight when publican Frank Wust's mobile phone started ringing.
"I answered the phone with my name and the guy on the other end said, 'You be frank, and I'll be earnest.'"
Ernie Dingo's chopper had finally landed. He was here to see the pub.
Frank and Debbie Wust have been running the pub for just over a decade. (ABC North West Qld: Meghan Dansie)
Celebrity drop-ins and television appearances have become almost routine for husband-and-wife team Frank and Debbie Wust over the years.
Truck drivers, graziers and locals mix with international tourists at the Walkabout Creek Hotel, owing to its starring role in the opening scenes of 1986 blockbuster Crocodile Dundee — viewers' first glimpse of Mick Dundee, bursting through the doors with a vanquished crocodile under his arm.
It's also the bustling centre of McKinlay, population 162, a little town nestled between Cloncurry and Winton in north-west Queensland.
After a decade at the helm, Debbie and Frank want to start a new chapter, but say their replacement must be someone who understands that taking on an outback pub also means taking on a community.
The pub is a base for the surrounding region. (ABC North West Qld: Meghan Dansie)
More than a pub
As temperatures start to tip 40 degrees Celsius in remote western Queensland, fewer tourists are pulling up on the bar stools of the old hotel.
But the days are still busy, Debbie says, with her pub acting as a vital community hub for the rest of the town and surrounding cattle stations.
As the community postal agent, Frank delivers mail to surrounding properties. (ABC North West Qld: Meghan Dansie)
"We're the post office, we're the mail run. It's a lot of office work, but a lot of hands on," Debbie says.
A bulk delivery of letters and packages arrives twice a week, to be sorted and sent to the town's residents and nearby cattle stations.
Frank wakes with the sun to start the mail run, navigating hot dirt roads and farm gates to deliver to 12 different stops.
Wet season flooding, arriving anywhere between January to March, transforms the pub into an outpost, a refuge for truckers stranded on their routes, and a coordination point for aerial emergency services.
Henry Boothman says the pub is essential to McKinlay's survival. (ABC North West Qld: Meghan Dansie)
On McKinlay's main street, Henry "Dicky" Boothman operates a coffee van, one of the only other businesses in town. With the petrol station now automated, he says the pub has become more vital than ever.
"It is the community. Without the pub, we don't have a town. It's a meeting place for everyone," he says.
"It's for all the station people to come in and have a beer."
Summer means fewer tourists travelling through outback towns like McKinlay. (ABC North West Qld: Meghan Dansie)
A tree change that stuck
The Wusts remember two lives: before, and after, Walkabout Creek.
Just over a decade ago, Debbie was an international travel consultant and Frank a fitter and turner by trade, working shifts at a coal mine.
The couple had recently returned home to Biloela in central Queensland from an outback road trip, where a stop-in at an iconic pub in the middle of nowhere had left them thinking about a tree change.
McKinlay is located roughly 1,600 kilometres north-west of Brisbane. (ABC North West Qld: Meghan Dansie)
"We didn't realise it was for sale at first," Debbie says.
"Thinking this is what we were about to do, we did a lot of research and broke the news to the kids, who were leaving home, that if they were coming to visit, this is where they were coming to visit us."
They placed their remaining school-age son in boarding school, packed up their belongings, and moved a 12-hour drive north-west to McKinlay, to start a new chapter in the pub's storied history.
The Walkabout was originally built as the Federal Hotel in 1900. (ABC North West Qld: Meghan Dansie)
Tourists pull in from far afield to see the 124-year-old pub, often with larger-than-life expectations that it will be as it was in the opening scenes of Crocodile Dundee, Debbie says.
"It is a big thing. It's people's bucket list, to come and see this."
The next era
The pub welcomes many types of visitors through its doors. (ABC North West Qld: Meghan Dansie)
But after years manning the outpost and maintaining the Dundee legacy, Frank and Debbie want out.
The Walkabout has been on the market for nearly three years, leaving them 10-and-a-half years into their 10-year plan.
"Plenty of people are asking questions, but no follow through," Debbie says.
"No-one's actually come out and had a serious look. But it was on the market for four years before we bought it too."
The Wusts end each day with a game of pool. (ABC North West Qld: Meghan Dansie)
The couple are getting on with things — long days are bookended by a cup of tea together in the morning and a game of pool to end each night.
Debbie says they will stay on until it sells to the right person, someone who understands all the hats worn by an outback publican.
"It's got to be someone who wants to live here, because that's what you're doing. You're now a community member. You're engaged.
"It's just waiting on the right person to turn up."
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