The Qld town offering $20,000 to move there

A small outback Queensland town 1000km west of Brisbane is now offering people $20,000 to move there in a bid to get more residents.

A small outback Queensland town has ramped up its push for more residents by almost doubling its Home Owner Grant scheme which in the past two years has attracted worldwide interest including a controversial Tokyo-based technology professor who has bought two blocks of vacant land.

The Quilpie Shire Council funded Home Owner Grant – that created a viral sensation when it was introduced in 2021 – has increased from $12,500 to $20,000 with the hope of convincing more people to settle in the red dust-coated town 1000km west of Brisbane.

One of the buyers last year has been revealed as Adrian Cheok – an Australian born electrical engineer and a professor at iUniversity in Tokyo.

The Quilpie Shire Council funded Home Owner Grant – that created a viral sensation when it was introduced in 2021 – has increased from $12,500 to $20,000.

Prof Cheok is at the forefront of research on human interaction with robots and co-created a device that allows people to remotely transmit the physical sensation of kissing.

In recent years he has focused on human sexual interaction with robots which had caused controversy and in 2019 in his home state of South Australia Prof Cheok ran as a candidate for right wing politician Fraser Anning’s anti-immigration focused Conservative National Party.

Professor Adrian Cheok.

Quilpie Shire chief executive Justin Hancock said he has not spoken to Prof Cheok who he understood intends moving his young family and working from Quilpie.

“We had the auctions last year and we sold to a number of people and one turned out to be him,” he said.

“It came as a surprise. It’s exciting to know that our connectivity is going to allow someone to trade the bright lights of Tokyo for the red dirt of the outback.”

Mr Hancock said Quilpie “went viral” with the new homeowner grant two years ago when the initial $12,500 matched the price of the 1000sq m blocks of land the Council was selling.

If purchasers met the criteria of building on their land and living in their new home for at least six months, they could receive the grant and effectively offset the cost of their land.

Quilpie Shire Council has increased their Home Owner Grant Scheme to $20,000 in a bid to attract more residents to the region. Picture: Supplied.

“With land valuations rising, and Council benefiting from that, and cost of living and interest rates also rising, we recognised that there was a need to increase our Home Owner Grant in line with this,” Mr Hancock said.

“Even with the rise in value of our land to $25,000 in the Curlew Estate, buying in Quilpie still represents exceptional value – and our new $20,000 grant will cover most of the price of their land if they build and live on it.

“We believe that this new $20,000 grant is the biggest on offer in Queensland.”

The Quilpie Council is aiming to increase the population of the Shire – which is the size of Tasmania – to 1000.

“When we set out we hope to sell five blocks of land and we settled on our eighth block on Monday and we also have six blocks of industrial land that has either been sold or under contract,” he said.

“We’re family friendly community and we have 85 kids under that age of five and out of a population on 800 that's not too bad and there are many more kids on the way.”

Originally published as The Qld town offering $20,000 to move there