Hi all,

I was actually in Bowen yesterday and spent about 4 hours being shown around the area by a local. It was a fly in, fly out visit encompassing Mackay as well over a period of 3 days.

The first thing I noticed about Bowen is how spread out it is. There are house and land packages being sold in quite a few parts of the town. I was fortunate enough to be shown what parts to be investing in and what parts to steer well clear of due to environmental issues. Speaking to many people who live in town, they are more hopeful than confident that the Abott Point expansion will go ahead. There general comments are ‘We’ve heard it all before’. There seems to be many vacant blocks being snapped up by prospective investors waiting to the sell their blocks at a profit further down the track.

Developers are also snapping up larger blocks at reasonably good prices.

People including Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer have already bought up land to accomodate workers as well as a proposed resort contstruciton by Gina Rinehart near Queens Beach. This leads me to believe that they have confidence in the area. Rental yield at the moment is approximately 5.1%.

The area around Bowen is also relient on agriculture (in particular mangoes and tomatoes), salt refining and to a lesser extent tourism.

As for Mackay, rental properties are being snapped up by renters quickly. the rental yields are undoubtly higher than in Bowen but entry prices are higher too. My conclusion was that if you’re looking for a reasonabl rental return with smaller long term capital gain, Mackay is the way to go though if you’re willing to put up with a lower rental yield but a ‘possible’ higher capital gain (reliant on the expansion happening) Bowen would be the way to go. Unfortunately I’m still undecided. Bowen really needs an injection of some sort to it’s infrastructure. They have been developing the foreshore near the town centre but areas including the harbour are reall not advanced enough to reach it’s potential.

Interesting that Rio Tinto has pulled out of the action at Abott Point. My feeling is that they have doen this to place pressure on the Federal Government to make a decision. I’m fairly confident that their attitude would change with a positive decision. If BHP also pulls out then that could be the expansion’s death knell.

Please note that these are only my personal opinions on the region and I am by no means a big time investor. I’m hoping to prepare my own report from the notes I’ve made speaking with local retailers, workers, miners and real estate agents. My advice to anyone would be to go up and make your own enquiries. You’ll be visiting a beautiful part of Australia while you’re at it and the locals are all friendly and willing to have a chat.

Nelson