Sue, Mick, and Walter travel into the bush (wilderness) in an old jalopy, only to be stopped in the road by a water buffalo. To remove this obstacle, Mick performs a horse whispering trick, which is successful. This convinces Sue that he is more than a victim of hyperbole. Walter leaves the other two on the shore of a lake, where he will rejoin them on the coming Wednesday. There, and on the way to the lake, the viewer is shown many pictures of natural beauty.
While at the lake, Dundee takes Sue to the wreck of a boat, from which (according to him) a large crocodile seized him and began a death roll. When it relaxed its jaws to get a better grip, he slit its throat and escaped. Sue tries to interest Mick in current events, such as the nuclear arms race; Mick dismisses the idea of involving himself in such (to him) remote affairs.
The next morning, viewers are privy to more stirring scenery. Dundee remarks to Sue the Outback is "man's country" where a "sheila" like her "wouldn't last five minutes." As she leaves for a walk, intending to meet him in the mountains in the afternoon, he condescendingly offers her his rifle, to fire shots in the air to call for his help. She takes the rifle contemptuously and leaves.
Mick, fearing the loss of her life, follows her. When Sue carelessly attracts the attention of a crocodile, he kills the crocodile to protect her; at this, Sue takes refuge in Mick's presence.
That evening, they are met by Nev, the son of a tribal elder. Mick follows Nev to a tribal dance, forbidding Sue to come; refusing to curb herself, she comes in secret. Although the tribesmen do not notice Sue, Mick sees her, causing her to wonder if he is telepathic. During the next day, Sue asks whether Mick was afraid to die; he replies in the negative, supporting this with the statement that he is a fisherman – a disciple of Jesus, according to the Bible – and therefore likely to be friends with his God.
Mick later takes Sue swimming in a mineral-water lake, where crocodiles do not go. She later invites him to visit New York City, which invitation he interprets as a gesture of courtship. Acting upon this, he kisses her passionately. Later, they travel via airplane to New York.
In New York, Sue is met by Richard, who behaves contemptuously toward Mick. We watch an awkward moment with an escalator, which foreshadows a series of "fish out of water" incidents.
Throughout Mick's stay, he assumes that if seven million people live in close proximity, they must necessarily be friendly to each other. Even when they are not, he shows no fear.
That night, Sue and Mick (whom Sue has placed in a luxurious hotel room) join the editor for dinner. Richard baits and teases Mick mercilessly and condescendingly, to which Mick replies by covertly knocking him unconscious. This prompts Sue to leave the restaurant in which they have been, taking both men with her.
Having departed from Richard and Sue, Mick invites his cab driver to join him for a bout of drinking. At the tavern, he encounters a man whose slang and fast talk make his speech incomprehensible, as well as a male transvestite whom Mick only identifies as such by touching his genitals. Later, Mick encounters two prostitutes; unaware of their profession, he takes their interest as purely sociable. When their employer demands that Mick "screw" the harlots, Mick takes offense at the term and hits him.
The next morning, while Mick is in the bathtub, merrily washing his clothes, Sue arrives, pretending to be the maid, and flirts with him. The pair go sightseeing. After buying a hot dog in Times Square, they witness a purse snatching, which Mick foils by throwing a can of food at the thief from 30 to 50 yards away. The can strikes accurately, prompting applause from bystanders.
In the evening, Sue takes Mick to a party; there, Mick encounters a woman with such a low pitch of voice that he believes she is also a transsexual and uses the former method to discover the truth. He later finds a man inhaling cocaine; mistaking the noise produced thereby for that produced by a congested nostril, he mixes the powder with hot steaming water, and advises the man to lean over it, having draped a towel over his head. The man, taken aback, adopts this new method of hyperstimulating himself. Sue finds Mick and takes him outside, where they are accosted by three thieves. When Sue advises Mick to pay the nearest thief, because of the latter's possession of a switchblade, Mick scoffs and casually frightens the thieves away by brandishing his own, larger hunting knife.
It is revealed that Sue's father is a big shot at Newsday; possibly its owner. He invites Richard, Sue, and Mick to a party at his mansion. Arriving in the limousine, Mick encounters two savage Dobermans, whom he tames with his water buffalo whispering trick. He meets an upper class dowager to whom he likens New York to a lunatic asylum into which he "fits in". Mick regrets his remark when Sue tells him that the lady was the patient of a psychiatrist. His idea is that such a patient must be insane; when Sue explains that people visit psychiatrists to share knowledge of their problems, Mick inquires into the idea that the dowager has no friends with whom to do so. Sue concedes the point.
At the dinner table, Richard makes a short speech welcoming Sue home from Australia and thanking Mick for saving her life. He then proposes marriage, to her surprise and unease, while Mick looks on somberly. Crushed, Mick has his driver Gus take him back to the city, where he drinks hard liquor to distract himself. He then wanders aimlessly through Times Square and into lonely alleys. It is suggested that he partially wants, at this point, to console himself by becoming a customer of the prostitute Simone, who is one of the two with whom he had conversed earlier.
In the alleys, Mick is accosted by Simone's employer, who has hired some bullies with whose help to take revenge. Mick is outnumbered, and having left his knife behind is without any weapon. He is beaten badly. Eventually, Gus intervenes by taking the crescent-shaped TV antenna from the limousine and using it as a boomerang to drive away the bullies. Mick praises him.
During the next day, Mick checks out of the hotel to "go walkabout" in order to forget or reconcile with his worries. Mick is going down a subway in Columbus Circle, headed for Grand Central Station, when Sue arrives looking for him. The platform is too crowded for her passage to him; therefore she enlists the aid of a bystanding man to relay her message. Through this man and another whom he enlists to help him, she tells Mick that she has refused to marry Richard, because she has given her heart to Mick instead. Hearing of this, Mick climbs over the heads and shoulders of the crowd, who applaud him, to reach Sue and embrace her.
