Tech guru takes a punt on Dunk just as tourists head back to our shores
After failing to snare AGL, Atlassian founder and billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes has been named as the buyer of Dunk Island in a deal estimated at $25 million.
Dunk Island may have finally found a new owner. (Photo ABC)
The island, which was devastated by Cyclone Yasi in 2011, was bought from the family of businessman Peter Bond, best known for his role with Linc Energy. He bought the freehold title in 2012 for about $7 million.
Since then it has been caught up in the Mayfair 101 collapse and the title went back to the Bonds. It was then expected to be sold to Mark Spillane’s Upsense Media, but that deal also fell through.
However, this time the deal has been settled.
Cannon-Brookes, worth an estimated $US12.7 billion ($A18.8 billion), made a failed bid with Brookfield, earlier this year for AGL but remains its biggest shareholder.
Co-founder of Atlassian Mike Cannon-Brookes. (Image: ABC)
Despite the natural beauty of Queensland’s islands, they have been notoriously hard to run and sell, not least because they are in the path of cyclones, but also because of the cost of operating a resort off the mainland.
Gina Rinehart was in the frame to buy Great Keppell Island for about $50 million and had plans for a resort styled on Spain’s Puerto Banus, but that too fell over.
There have been successful deals. Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest bought Lizard Island for $42 million last year and earlier this year Sydney hotelier Glenn Piper bought Hook Island for an undisclosed amount.
The apparent sale of Dunk, was brokered through JLL Hotels and Hospitality’s Andrew Langsford Nick Roche with Tom Gibson from CBRE Hotels.
It follows new data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed 650,000 arrivals in Australia during May. That was a monthly increase of 76,000.
Significantly for the domestic tourism sector, 659,000 Australians left the country in May, an increase of 53,000.
Queensland received 47,000 short term arrivals in May, which was a gradual improvement on the 43,000 in April, but still 67 per cent down on the pre-Covid 2019 level.
Before Covid shut international borders, short-term arrivals to Queensland peaked at 212,000.
The ABS said provisional figures for arrivals into the country for June was 736,000 arrivals, up from the 650,000 in May.
