Remote Cloncurry, Queensland, a hotspot with high yield potential: Terry Ryder

Property investors should take a good look at the remote, historic Queensland outback town of Cloncurry, about 770 kilometres west of Townsville, according to hotspotting.com.au's Terry Ryder.

The town is the birthplace of the Royal Flying Doctors service and maverick independent MP Bob Katter.

Cloncurry is one of just three mining hotspots picked by Ryder – the others being coal seam gas-rich the Galilee Basin (inland from Townsville and Gladstone) and Broken Hill in outback NSW, where there are $7 billion in mining projects.

Ryder's mining town recommendations come with the warning that all mining towns are high-risk property investments – though with the potential for strong gains –  and only suitable for those investors with a high-risk appetite.

In Cloncurry's favour is the fact that it is the focus of a number of mining projects but also has ties to the grazing industry and to outback tourism.

“Cloncurry is not essentially a mining town, but a regional town of just 3,000 people far north-west Queensland near Mt Isa,” said Ryder in a Property Observer webinar.

“It services the grazing economy around it and the tourism industry, as it is quite a historic town.

“Mines are starting to spring up around it and are entering the construction phase.

“The good thing is they are not iron ore mines or coal mines (where commodity prices have fallen), but copper and zinc mines."

Major mining projects include Xstrata’s $580 million expansion of Ernest Henry mine (named after the founder of Cloncurry), which produces copper, gold and magnetite.

Other mining projects include the Cudeco copper mine just outside Cloncurry, where blast-hole drilling and other pre-blasting activities are now complete, MMG’s Dugald River project – one of the world’s largest and highest grade known undeveloped lead-zinc-silver deposits and Xstrata’s Mt Margaret mine, which will produce around 30,000 tonnes of copper per year over the next five years. 

At the same time a multi-user rail facility is being built to service all those mining companies and due for completion in mid-2014.