Meanwhile, also on Sunday 16 July, Hughes Aviation (Hughes Pastoral Group) (Gympie) Pilatus PC-12//47E NGX VH-8HP was noted departing Mackay Airport for Miranda Downs before it then flew to Mount Isa and Lake Nash.  During the afternoon it flew from there to Emerald Airport and Keeroongooloo. 

On Friday 14 July, recently registered Helibiz / Heli Lift Bell 205A-1 VH-WOC was spotted as it arrived into Rockhampton Airport.  It looked to have flown up from Redcliffe via the Sunshine Coast and Bundaberg Airport.

On Thursday 13 July, American-registered but Australian-based Gulfstream Aerospace G-V-SP (G550) bizjet N360LF was noted arriving into Hamilton Island Airport from Sydney.

While a trio of Seair Pacific / Istlecote Textron Aviation (Cessna) 208B Caravans were noted completing some Fly-in Fly-out (FIFO) runs in the region.

Seemingly on a deployment to Rockhampton Airport for upcoming joint military exercises, on Monday 3 July, Helicorp (Toll) Leonardo S.P.A. Helicopters (Agusta) AW139 helicopter VH-XIU was spotted arriving from Townsville as "Rescue 902".

VH-XIU "Rescue 902" looks to be currently supporting Australian Army helicopter operations as it usually operates from the Army's Robertson Barracks in Darwin which is the home of 1st Aviation Regiment which operates Eurocopter Tiger attack helicopters.

Indeed over the weekend, VH-XIU "Rescue 902" flew over from Darw...

On Friday 30 June, Cirrus Design Corp. SF50 Vision Jet wearing the American registration marking of N616TS looked to fly into Hervey Bay (Fraser Coast) Airport from Nambucca Heads (New South Wales) before it then departed to Cairns. 

The Eastern Grass Owl is regarded generally as scarce in Australia. In south-east Queensland it is restricted to tall grassland in coastal areas, often interspersed with sugar cane plantations. The Sunshine Coast is arguably the stronghold of the species in the region. Birds here are concentrated in the grasslands and plantations of the Maroochy River floodplain, and in isolated areas of wallum heath. Since moving to the Sunshine Coast in 2009, I have noticed a clear and sharp decline in numbers of Eastern Grass Owl locally. They were once resident in Yandina Creek Wetland and along the adjoining River Road but Ive not detected them there during recent surveys. Across the Maroochy River in the vicinity of Burtons Road near Bli Bli, I was aware of three pairs in different places on private property, to which I had access with permission from owners. This population is much reduced and any birds remaining are no longer nesting, as they had in the past.

Ive reported on how the economic recovery has seen large falls in unemployment rates across Queensland, including in most regions (see Remarkable turnarounds for Townsville, Mackay, and Cairns). But I need to acknowledge that employment growth is still overwhelmingly in the South East* as it has been for several decades now (Figure 1). Jobs and people are becoming more concentrated in the South East, and the pandemic doesnt appear to have stopped that trend. Robert Sobyra of Construction Skills Queensland CSQ) has done some great research on this phenomena (see Why Regions Are Falling Behind And What To Do About It), and I spoke with him about his research, which covers the whole of Australia, on the latest episode of my Economics Explored podcast. You can listen on major podcasting apps including Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. A lightly edited AI-generated transcript of the conversation is available on the Economics Explored website.

...

In my upcoming Brisbane Club presentation on Tuesday, one chart Ill show is of selected Queensland regional unemployment rates, highlighting how the economic recovery generally and a booming mining sector have translated into some extraordinarily low unemployment rates in some regions. Regions such as Townsville, Cairns, and Mackay are experiencing rates of unemployment far below highs experienced last decade (see the chart below). The improvement in my hometown of Townsville is particularly remarkable.* The ABSs estimate of the 12-month moving average unemployment rate for Townsville in July was 2.9%. Compare that with unemployment rates of 11-12% five years ago. 

In a small number of regions, unemployment rates remain high, most notably Logan-Beaudesert and Queensland Outback, and Wide Bay (see chart below). I suspect this is partly related to the disproportionate numbers of disadvantaged people living in these regions, including Indigenous and low-skilled, long-term unemployed people. Structural change, including a declining manufacturing sector and mechanisation in agriculture reducing the need for on-farm labour, are also probably relevant. You can find the data behind this chart in the Queensland Government Statisticians Offices handy Regional Labour Force briefing. 

One thing to keep in mind is that, while the numbers make sense in terms of what we know has been happening in state and regional economies, there is a large degree of uncertainty regarding the figures or point estimates to use the jargon. The estimates are derived from the Labour Force Survey and the ABS would only be surveying, at most, a few hundred households in many of the regions for which data are presented. Ill aim to examine the size of the sampling errors in a future post.

Finally, if youd like to attend the Brisbane Club Economics in Conversation event on Tuesday 6 September from 5pm Im speaking at, alongside former state government finance minister Rachel Nolan and current shadow Treasurer David Janetzki, then please let me know and I can arrange it with the Club. Tickets are $65, but there will be plenty of drinks and finger food, as well as some great...

CONGRATULATIONS TO SHERYN BRODIE, RECIPIENT of the 2022 Ric Nattrass Research Grant! Sheryn is currently undertaking her PhD at James Cook University in Townsville, and she describes her research below.

For my PhD research, I am using environmental sound recordings to investigate the chorusing patterns of a community of frogs in North Queensland. Acoustic monitoring is an important method for studying frogs in their habitat males are highly vocal, and their calls give away their location and breeding intentions. Sound recorders designed for recording automatically and continuously in the field are now cheaply available, and this allows us to record the natural vocal behaviour of animals continuously at multiple locations and over longer time frames. This increased scale of acoustic data provides opportunities for studying the chorusing behaviour of whole communities of frogs over seasonal time scales and beyond. Long-duration sound recordings can easily be collected, so the current challenge is how to analyse the vast amounts of audio and extract useful data on the species of interest.

I have a large set of sound recordings made at several frog breeding sites at Hervey Range, near Townsville. Every night over a 19-month period (including two wet seasons) I captured the chorusing of 17 frog species. Recording at 6 sites resulted in more than 33,000 hours of audio this would take one person working full-time about 17 years to listen to!

Using these recordings, the aims of my project are to: (i) investigate computer-aided methods to extract data from long-duration recordings that can be used to answer ecological questions; (ii) describe the chorusing patterns of a community of frogs in a tropical savanna and investigate the main environmental drivers; and (iii) investigate the acoustic interactions and potential impacts of the invasive cane toad on the acoustic behaviour of native frogs.