Building approvals, live development applications and major projects across the Outback - North statistical area — covering Mount Isa, Cloncurry and Carpentaria and 6 more.
These four figures are deliberately not added together. An application, an approval and a project under construction are often the same building at three points in its life, measured by three different bodies with three different lags. Read them as a sequence, not a total.
What councils and certifiers have formally permitted — the ABS series, published about four months in arrears.
Dwelling approvals a year per 100 existing homes, with Queensland and Australia for comparison. This is the same activity as the totals view, divided by the size of the area — which is the only fair way to compare a large SA3 with a small one.
Dwelling approvals a year per 1,000 residents, each year divided by that year’s estimated resident population (ABS ERP at 30 June), not by today’s — which matters most in fast-growing areas, where a fixed denominator can understate the early years by half. The most recent periods use the latest published ERP, as the population series runs a year behind approvals. Read it alongside the per-100-homes view: the two differ wherever household size does.
Dwelling units approved each financial year. The dashed line is the five-year average of 33.
Dwelling approvals a year per 100 existing dwellings.
Detached houses as a share of existing homes, against the share of recent approvals.
Share of each year’s approvals.
The same approvals, measured against the population they have to house.
People added for every new address verified, against the size of an average local household.
A bar longer than the household average means the area gained more residents than its new housing could hold, and the extra had to be absorbed by existing homes.
Dwellings a year: what is currently being approved, against what the 2041 population projection implies.
dwellings approved a year per 1,000 residents. No population projection is published for this area.
What is funded and moving — the projects large enough to change how Outback - North works, ranked by committed value and how close they are to delivery.
CopperString 2032 is a transformational 1,000 km high-voltage transmission network connecting the North West Minerals Province to the National Electricity Market. As of May 2026, the project has reached…
A 1,100 km high-voltage electricity transmission project connecting Queensland's North West Minerals Province to the National Electricity Market. The project is led by Queensland Investment Corporation (QIC)…
CopperString (formerly CopperString 2032) is a major Queensland Government transmission project connecting the North West Minerals Province to the National Electricity Market. Following a 2025 review by…
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Applications and major projects plotted where they are actually proposed, with the 12 projects AreaSearch tracks here on their own tab — filterable by type, delivery stage, area and committed value. To search every application on record rather than this sample, use the section above.
Each area below opens a map builder on its own page — a tool for putting a map and a table into a report. Pick the place types you want plotted (schools, supermarkets, medical, child care, transport and the rest of what AreaSearch holds), add development applications as their own layer, drop your own points, then recolour, renumber and export the result as a table or CSV. A this area only toggle clips everything to the boundary you are looking at. Searches are charged against your credit balance — 1 credit per 40 results from AreaSearch data — and setting filters costs nothing until you search. The builder works on one suburb-sized area at a time, which is why it opens per area rather than across the whole of Outback - North.
| Local government area | Share of Outback - North | Applications on record | Register read to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mount Isa | 62% of residents | — | Not yet collected |
| Cloncurry | 12% of residents | 2 | November 2023 |
| Carpentaria | 6.9% of residents | — | Not yet collected |
| Flinders | 4.9% of residents | — | Not yet collected |
| Doomadgee | 4.6% of residents | — | Not yet collected |
| Mornington | 3.4% of residents | — | Not yet collected |
| McKinlay | 2.8% of residents | — | Not yet collected |
| Richmond | 2.5% of residents | — | Not yet collected |
| Burke | 1.4% of residents | — | Not yet collected |
The same view of building approvals, applications and major projects for areas neighbouring Outback - North.
Outback - North is Statistical Area Level 3 31502 in the ABS Australian Statistical Geography Standard (2021 edition), made up of 4 Statistical Areas Level 2. It has an estimated 30,964 residents, +1.9% since the 2021 Census.
| Measure | Source | To |
|---|---|---|
| Dwelling approvals, five-year average | ABS / AreaSearch | June 2026 |
| House share of approvals | ABS / AreaSearch | June 2026 |
| Residents per approval | ABS / AreaSearch | June 2026 |
| Value per approved dwelling | ABS / AreaSearch | June 2026 |
| Commercial work approved | ABS / AreaSearch | June 2026 |
| Verified new addresses since the Census | Address register / AreaSearch | May 2026 |
| Major projects | Infrastructure Australia / state agencies / AreaSearch | Ongoing |
Figures on this page are read live from the AreaSearch database each time it loads, so they update as soon as a source does.
The ABS recorded 12 dwelling approvals across Outback - North in the 2024-25 financial year, against a five-year average of 33 a year.
AreaSearch tracks 10 current major projects in Outback - North, 4 of them under construction. The largest include CopperString 2032, CopperString 2032 - Northern Queensland SuperGrid and CopperString.
Outback - North is an ABS Statistical Area Level 3. It is covered by parts of 9 local government areas — Mount Isa, Cloncurry, Carpentaria, Flinders, Doomadgee, Mornington, McKinlay, Richmond and Burke. AreaSearch publishes development figures at ABS statistical boundaries rather than council boundaries, so they reconcile with the official ABS series.
On development approvals, Outback - North is adding new dwellings more slowly than Queensland as a whole — 0.10 approvals per 100 existing dwellings a year against the state figure of 0.77.
ABS building approvals are published with a lag of roughly four months; this page carries the series to June 2026. Development applications are collected from council planning portals and refresh continuously, with the most recent application here lodged in November 2023. Major project records are reviewed on an ongoing basis. Each section carries its own currency label so the four are never confused.
Development data is provided for general information. Estimated values, dwelling counts and delivery dates come from the lodging or delivering party and are not independently verified by AreaSearch. Confirm anything material with the relevant council or agency before relying on it.