Plot
Sue Charlton is a feature writer for her father's newspaper, Newsday, and is dating the editor, Richard Mason. She travels to Walkabout Creek, a small township in the Northern Territory of Australia, to meet Michael J. "Mick" or "Crocodile" Dundee, a bushman said to have lost half a leg to a saltwater crocodile before crawling 100 miles to safety. On arriving there, she meets Walter "Wally" Reilly, Mick's business partner, who assures Sue that Mick will be along soon. When Mick arrives that night, Sue observes that his leg is not missing, but he shows her a large scar he calls a "love bite". As Sue dances with Mick, a hunter from the city accuses him of being a poacher, and Mick responds by knocking him out with one punch.
At first, Sue is unimpressed by Mick's pleasant-mannered but uncouth behaviour, and his clumsy advances towards her. Mick admits he was once in a relationship with a woman, but she left him when he went on walkabout for 18 months. Sue is amazed, when once in the Outback, she witnesses Mick subduing a water buffalo, killing a snake with his bare hands, scaring away a band of drunken kangaroo hunters by tricking them into thinking one of the kangaroos is shooting back, and taking part in an Aboriginal (Pitjantjatjara) tribal dance ceremony.
After the first night, offended by Mick's assertion that as a "sheila", she would be incapable of surviving in the Outback on her own, Sue goes out alone to prove him wrong, although at his request, she takes his rifle with her. Mick secretly follows her to make sure she stays safe; when she stops at a billabong to fill her canteen, she is attacked by a crocodile and rescued by Mick. Overcome with gratitude, Sue finds herself becoming attracted to him.
Sue invites Mick to return with her to New York City on the pretext of wrapping up the story. At first, Wally scoffs at her suggestion, but he changes his mind when she tells him the newspaper would pay.
In New York, Mick is perplexed by local behaviour and customs, but he uses his survival skills, ability to improvise, and innate common sense to good-naturedly overcome problematic or even dangerous situations, including a disagreement with a pimp and an attempted mugging.
Sue resumes her relationship with Richard. She chastises Mick for punching Richard in an Italian restaurant after Richard had repeatedly made insulting wisecracks about Mick's unsophisticated lifestyle. Sue finds herself increasingly torn between Richard and her affection for Mick. At a dinner in her father's home in honour of Sue's safe return, to which Mick has been invited, Richard proposes marriage to Sue, and her confused nonresponse is taken by Richard and the other dinner guests, including Mick, as acceptance.
Disheartened at Sue's engagement, Mick decides he has had enough of New York City, and as he leaves his hotel, he tells Irving, the doorman, that he is going on walkabout around the United States. Shortly after Mick leaves, Sue arrives, and Irving tells her Mick is headed for the nearest subway stop. Sue kicks her shoes off and runs barefoot after Mick. When she arrives at the subway station, she cannot reach him through the crowd on the platform, but has members of the crowd relay her message to him; she is not going to marry Richard because she loves Mick. Hearing her message, Mick walks to Sue on the heads and raised hands of the onlookers and embraces her to the applause of the crowd.
