Back When Mildura Put Snake on the Menu

Stock Photo

If you ever want proof that Mildura has always marched to its own drum, you don’t need to look much further than the old Kar-Rama motel restaurant.

Because back in the day when the place was in full flight, the Kar-Rama wasn’t just doing schnitzel and chips. It was doing yabbies, “Murray River salmon”(Carp)… and snake meat. 

And the best part? They didn’t even try to hide how local it all was.

Snake on the menu, toast through the hatch, and “Murray River salmon” that wasn’t

A hotel review looking back at Kar-Rama’s earlier era paints a ripper picture of what dining there used to be like in the early 1970s: breakfast delivered through little hatches, a menu leaning hard into “river country” flavours, and a cheeky special — snake meat bought from local hunters. It even notes the “Murray River Salmon” wasn’t Salmon at all — it was carp. Which is the most Mildura thing ever: dress it up with a fancy name and back yourself in. 

Why it happened (and why it’s actually a brilliant tourism story)

To understand it properly, you’ve got to remember what Kar-Rama was built around c.1962, when motels were booming and every town wanted something memorable to pull travellers off the highway. 

Back then, serving “snake” wasn’t about fine dining. It was about a story.

It was:

• “Have you stayed there? They’ve got that butterfly pool…”

• “Mate, their restaurant does snake…”

• “You wouldn’t believe what they call Carp…”

That’s marketing gold — the kind you can’t buy. People remembered it, talked about it, and came home with a yarn.

The best bit: it’s very “us”

Plenty of towns have motels. Plenty of towns have a famous pool. But not many can say, with a straight face:

“Yeah, back in the day our motel restaurant served snake.”

And that’s the sort of quirky local history that makes visitors smile — and makes locals go, “Yep… that sounds about right.”