09 May 2022
Words
Shane Croghan Informer 102
Far North Queensland: It’s All About The Diversity
While the past two years have undoubtedly been a challenging period in Far North Queensland, blue skies (both figuratively and literally) are about to shine on the region.
When noted naturalist and biologist David Attenborough is asked by children to name his favourite place on earth, his answer is North Queensland.
“I have no hesitation in answering that question. My favourite place is North Queensland. It has, for a naturalist, everything,” Attenborough says.
“It has an amazing rainforest which is quite unlike any other rainforest in the world. Not only does it have that, but down on the coast, it has the Great Barrier Reef.
“On top of that, there’s terrific wine and food, so that’s the place for me.”
As the Far North Queensland resident broker for ResortBrokers, whose massive region runs from Mission Beach in the south to Cape York in the north and Mount Isa in the west, I couldn’t agree more.
Without a doubt, one of the things which most attracts visitors and investors to Far North Queensland is its diversity.
Measuring some 380,750 square kilometres, my region is Queensland’s largest covering 22 per cent of the state’s area. To put this in perspective, that is larger than the entire country of Germany.
You have the beautiful Cassowary Coast to the south of Cairns covering the main towns of Innisfail, Tully and Cardwell. This region is dominated by the farming sector - predominantly bananas and sugar cane - and contains tourist gems such as Mission Beach and Kurrimine Beach.
The mining capital of north-west Queensland in Mount Isa is one of the most productive single mines in world history, based on combined production of lead, silver, copper and zinc.
It is the administrative, commercial and industrial centre of this vast north-western region and is also home to the largest rodeo in the Southern Hemisphere.
Then there’s the Savannah Way - a road trip stretching 3,700kms from Cairns to Broome in Western Australia – and the trip of a lifetime. In the Queensland component of this journey, you travel though places such as Undara - home to the world’s longest lava tube systems.
Mount Surprise attracts fossickers looking for their own special gemstones and Georgetown is a town very much in the middle of “cattle country” and also home to growing gold mining and cotton growing industries. This road trip also takes in the towns of Croydon and Normanton, previously burgeoning gold mining centres and now very much focussed on the cattle industry.
While North Queensland remained relatively unscathed by COVID from a health perspective, like many of the more remote areas of Australia, we struggled with the economic uncertainty.
For a region which relies heavily on international tourism, as well as interstate visitors, border closures caused challenges for the market. Now, with borders reopening, we are seeing green shoots starting to emerge.
One of the interesting outcomes of the pandemic was the mass migration from the southern states into Queensland, which has always been regarded as the exotic north. Southerners, fed up with lockdowns and cold weather, are looking to North Queensland as the panacea to their pandemic problems.
Queenslanders themselves have long held a parochial pride in North Queensland, home to Australia’s barramundi and prawn fishing capital in Karumba, located right in the Gulf of Carpentaria at the mouth of the Norman River.
North of Cairns sits the coastal town of Cooktown famous for the landing of Captain James Cook in 1770. Even further to the north as you head towards Cape York - the very top point of Australia – lays the mining town of Weipa known for its enormous natural deposits of bauxite and a key town in northern Australia for mining and cattle exports.
The top part of the Cape is home to many Indigenous communities which are steeped in local history. They are magnificent coastal communities and home to some of the best fishing spots you will find in Australia.
With the weather starting to cool down and the market starting to heat up, investors will be looking to the nirvana which is North Queensland. And we’ll be here ready to welcome them, with that quintessential Queensland warmth, for which this region is renowned.
7 Solid Reasons to Invest in Far North Queensland
- In 2019-20 the tourism industry contributed an estimated $2.4 billion to the Far North QLD regional economy. and supported about 24,300 jobs
- In 2021-22 the QLD Government will deliver a $1.2 billion capital works program in Far North Queensland
- Planned and committed projects include $502 million in mining and $4 billion in renewable energy
- More than $500 million of housing projects have been approved in Cairns since June 2020
- 1 in 8 people in FNQ are employed in tourism with major airports in Mount Isa and Cairns
- House prices in Cairns grew by 22 percent to an average of $527,799 and by 11 per cent to $820,168 in Port Douglas in the past year
- It’s where the world’s oldest rainforest meets the largest rainforest on the planet
