Awe-Struck Aussies Loose in L.A. : Visiting Tasmanians Give ‘Crocodile’ His Due, but These Blokes Are the Real Thing

“Crocodile” Dundees they are not, mate. He was film fiction, a composite. These men are fact, the mold--Australian life as imitated by Paul Hogan’s art, protoplasts of every cobber, digger, blue or bloke who ever winked from a Foster’s commercial.

So . . . over a beer in a Santa Monica pub, in his moleskin pants, checking a pocket watch in its kangaroo-skin pouch, Harold Riley is “Crocodile” Dundee. Staring at girls, pacing out the length of a limo at LAX, asking a panhandler for change, Darryl Stafford is all the mischief of actor Paul Hogan.

Stafford and Riley understand Dundee because they, too, are bushmen and outback guides. Riley operates a pioneer village, Stafford runs four-wheel-drive wilderness tours. And just like Dundee in the movie, they were Australian innocents in America last week, visiting Los Angeles to promote their corner of Down Under’s tourist industry, to look up newspaper ladies who interviewed them in their native habitat and to have a bloody good time being themselves--tough, honest, self-made, sun-scuffed diamonds rougher than a dingo’s paw.

Take Riley. Home is Black Stumps, Tasmania. He uses just his surname because it’s a better fit for someone who can still snare a wallaby with a string and a stick. Riley makes kangaroo-skin belt pouches and laces for everything he carries or wears. He sees his consumption of Tasmania’s Boag beer as a patriotic duty.

He’s not much on Coors: “Too bloody sweet. . . .”

Tough Little Tasmanian

Take Devil Stafford. It’s really Darryl Stafford. But they call him Devil after a tough little animal wanderer of the Tasmanian bush. Just like Stafford. He wears a rabbit felt hat and cooks the best kangaroo burgers any side of Cradle Mountain. There’s aborigine blood on his mother’s side, and great-great-grandfather Stafford was a deported British pickpocket.

He remembers the ancestral reputation: “Sticky Fingers Bill Stafford. Of course, if he’d been any good he wouldn’t have got caught. . . .”

Stafford is 43, bald, a tanned stump in a shearer’s shirt. Riley is 49 and the bull slinger of the two. Their grins show teeth they must have fixed themselves. With pliers.

They met 30 years ago when Riley and his bulldozer almost rolled a log over the head of lumberjack-trucker Stafford. They’ve been guffawing about it ever since.

“There are times,” Stafford roars, “he wishes he’d just kept on rolling that gum tree.” He laughs. The blue eyes disappear.

Riley quit heavy equipment to become a blade shearer, blacksmith, shingle splitter, bush carpenter, bullock drover, wallaby trapper and operator of Black Stumps, his pioneer village and tourist stop near Devonport.

Stafford gave up logging (his father was killed by a falling eucalyptus) three years ago to buy an Isuzu bus and a Toyota truck as the hub of Devil Four-Wheel-Drive Tours to the Tasmanian wilderness.

They arrived in Los Angeles last week--Australia’s answer to Gallagher and Sheen, two irrepressible yet impressionable rascals relishing all sights and every second of their first trip outside Australia.

We should have been warned.

Riley on airport metal detectors: “The bloke thought I had a bomb in me boot. Turned out to be the steel toecaps. I said: ‘Whatever you do, Mate, don’t ask me to take the boots off. I’ve had ‘em on for 24 hours.’ ”

Stafford on landing at LAX: “We’d been told that L.A. was big. I said: ‘Nah, no problem.’ Then we arrived and I thought: ‘Strewth. Where have they dropped us?’ For 30 minutes we stood and watched what everybody else did. Then we followed them and, lo and behold, we got to our hotel.”

Riley on that hotel: “I only had two little bags, but the bloke insisted on carrying them. I’m saying: ‘That’s all right, mate.’ He’s saying: ‘No sir, it’s my job.’ I’ve never been called ‘sir’ in all my bloody life.”

Stafford on Disneyland: “To get on the rides you had to queue up for one hour and a half. I’ve never been still that long. In one hour and a half, you could drive halfway across Tasmania.”

Whetting Their Thistles

Riley on artichokes: “This is the only country in the world where they eat thistles. Blimey, it took me 20 minutes to get to the edible part and by the time I’d found it, the rest of me tucker was cold.”

Stafford on telephone answering machines: “Bloody awful. Just like talking to a log.”

Riley on American money: “The big one is only worth 5 cents but the tiny little one is worth 10 cents. You’d think it would be the other way around.”

Stafford on motel showers: “Don’t understand ‘em. Only one bloody tap for everything. And those steel plugs in the sinks. Had to use me knife to get it out. Bent the blade all to buggery.”

Riley on the big city: “You never hear any birds, no animal sounds whatsoever.”

Stafford on the big city: “You’re not in command; it’s got you. It’s like trying to catch a Tasmanian devil. You never can, and the best you can do is catch hold of his tail and slow him down a little.”

And both on Paul (G’day) Hogan and Mick “Crocodile” Dundee, the man and the character who, in their minds, are inseparable.

“He’s a good Australian,” Riley said. “He’s the kind of bloke you could sit down with and have a few beers and a good yarn. And a bit like us in starting from nothing and making something of himself.”

Stafford agrees. But he doesn’t want to be known as an ersatz “Crocodile” Dundee. Nor by the tag recently given him by an Australian magazine: Devil Dundee.

“If you want to do any good, you’ve got to operate as yourself,” he explained. “Hogan has earned his success and why should someone take that off him. Nah, I want to stay Devil Stafford, not become Devil Dundee.”

Despite the confusion and irritants of Los Angeles and the quick life, Stafford and Riley are enjoying their tour and sitting down with new friends and hearing some different yarns over a few foreign beers. There’s more ahead. Canada. Alaska. Japan.

Then home to where they feel best. To the bush. To Riley’s ideal, a walk with his good dog Gypsy to hear all those animal noises in the silence. To Stafford’s peace, a long and lone hike up Cradle Mountain where he finds freedom.

Still, no one knows how long the serenity will stay.

The Tasmanian government has been looking at Stafford, his moleskin pants, his honest grin, his bushman’s hat.

It has been suggested that he might make a model spokesman for television commercials selling the island state to the United States.

Odd, that’s exactly what Paul Hogan did before he became “Crocodile” Dundee.