The majority of houses in Middlemount are owned by one of the mining companies (Capcoal, off the top of my head). They have a couple of mines around the town, but there are also 2 other mining companies with working mines in the area.

Capcoal provides the housing to their workers. Since they own most of the town, if you don't work for them you have a hard time finding a house, either to buy or to rent. A lot of workers around middlemount live in Dysart and drive the hour or so each way to get to work.

Middlemount is a pretty nice town – the mining companies have invested in making it a nice place to live. Nice town centre, shopping centre (small), parks, child play areas etc. It's one of the nicest in the Bowen Basin.

Due to the shortage of supply, you would expect house prices AND rent to be high. This is borne out by the property that's on realestate.com.au at the moment http://www.realestate.com.au/cgi-bin/rsearch?a=o&id=104595446&emailsource=emailalert. In Dysart, this place would go for about 330-350K. This is the first existing property to go on sale in Middlemount for a couple of months at least, so you might have trouble getting a bank valuer to agree. Shortage of supply means you'll probably get a good sell price as well, but it's hard to see a 3BR highset appreciating rapidly from that $480K asking price.

There's a new development going on in the town, with prices in the 300's and expected yields of about 700pw. There are about 70 homes in the development, and it's feasible that this kind of return is possible. It's at stage 1, and you can buy off the plan at the moment.

Middlemount is quite remote, so maintenance and property management is quite expensive, so a newer place is probably a better bet. There is talk about improving the road to the northeast, which would make Mackay almost reachable for a day's shopping trip.

Hope that helps,

Daedalus.