It's one of the last remaining coastal suburbs in Queensland where you can buy a beachside block of land for under $300,000.
Just four-and-a-half hours drive north of Brisbane, Elliott Heads in the Bundaberg region is known for its sweeping white sandy beaches and idyllic weather.
But the seaside haven that is home to 1,160 people is earmarked to undergo a major metamorphosis that has been decades in the making.
Work has started on the $2 billion master-planned community South Beach which was the brainchild of local macadamia farmer John Manera.
"It took me over 27 years to actually accumulate this land, and when I bought the last farm I thought well maybe I could do something for the community here one day," he said.
That dream is now becoming a reality, with groundwork starting on the first stage of the 2,000 residential lot development.
Residential lots were selling for $224,000 and South Beach development director Helen Blackburn said they were going quick.
"We released stage one to sell off the plan in December of last year and we sold [out] in one day, so 33 lots sold in one day," Ms. Blackburn said.
"We then released stages two and three in February this year and sold 101 lots in a week … so it has just gone nuts."
The master plan includes zoning for a shopping precinct, a 320-lot retirement village, and a nursing home to be developed in the coming years.
"It's been about 17 years in the making to get it to this point," Mr. Manera said.
"The goal is to do something for the community, and make it all work, make everybody happy."
He said the most important thing to him was that the young generation had somewhere to have a good life and a good time.
Ms. Blackburn said there had been a lot of interest from buyers from further south.
"There are a lot of people moving up here from the Sunshine Coast … they have found that Elliott Heads is the next Noosa for them," she said.
"It is a quiet little village and it's beautiful here, you know your neighbors and you can get down to the beach … it is idyllic."
Changing markets for the regions
Data released by CoreLogic showed regional housing prices dropped by 1.5 percent in August.
Head researcher Eliza Owen said the fall was tacked onto a rise in interest rates and the behavior of capital city markets.
"This is really the effect of rising interest rates starting to impact people's borrowing capacity and willingness to pay across different parts of Australia," Ms. Owen said.
"The fact that we've seen three successive rate rises of 0.5 percent means this is going to start impacting those markets pretty rapidly."
While the decline in property prices may pale in comparison to the 41 percent upswing felt after the pandemic, Ms. Owen said it was a sign of what was to come.