Friday 17 June 2022 08:22 AM Kim Kardashian Australia hoax: Café manager goes to ground after fake sighting trends now

The manager of a Cairns café who claimed to local media that Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson had dined at his restaurant has 'gone to ground' after the journalists he duped went looking for answers.

A reporter for the Cairns Post went to speak to Matt Black at the Botanica café he manages in Edge Hill on Friday but was told 'no comment' after asking questions about the hoax sighting.

Daily Mail Australia also had little luck trying to reach Mr Black by telephone earlier in the day, although Botanica did acknowledge the media storm by taunting the press in an Instagram post that morning.

ABC Far North was the first media outlet to report on Kardashian, 41, and Davidson, 28, visiting Far North Queensland.

The website claims to have spoken to Mr Black about his alleged encounter with the American reality star and her comedian boyfriend on Wednesday, but has since deleted its article after Daily Mail Australia debunked the story.

However, the ABC was far from the only publication to report on the sighting that never occurred, as most of the Australian media did the same.

While Davidson is in Australia filming his new movie Wizards!, his A-list girlfriend has not joined him. Kardashian is still in Los Angeles with her children. 

After a flurry of local press coverage, the alarm was first sounded when it emerged Kardashian had been pictured in LA on Tuesday night just hours before she was supposedly seen brunching 11,000km away in Far North Queensland.

Mr Black spun an elaborate yarn about Kardashian and Davidson's security team allegedly asking café staff to place their phones on the counter for the duration of the pair's date so no one could take photos of them while they were dining.