Landowners Shout ‘Bingo’ as West Australia’s Mining Towns Boom

Paul Eaton moved to Karratha 10 years ago with a fledgling building business. Now he and his 40 employees can’t build homes quickly enough in the remote Western Australian mining town where demand for land is so hot that the government organizes lotteries to select buyers.

“During ballots people would literally yell out ‘bingo’ if they got a block of land because instantly they knew they’d made A$100,000 ($90,100),” Eaton, 43, said in between monitoring workers at a building site in the town of 20,000 people. “They’d build a house on it and their profit would go up to A$250,000.”