The story goes that Yohachiro Iwasaki, of the Mitsubishi family fame, was flying back to Japan from Brisbane one day when he looked out the window to see the sprawling Keppel islands in the southern Great Barrier Reef. It reminded him of Honolulu so he decided to build a resort there.

The resulting Iwasaki resort, just north of Yeppoon and built in the 1970s, was the first major tourism investment from Japan. It kicked off a massive influx of capital that helped build the Gold Coast, Cairns and many other Australian tourism assets.