I lived in the Whitsundays between '94 and 2003. Lot of attempts to pull this off both by David mariner at Laguna (got as far as a real nice 2klm grass strip) and also by Prosvegas Council pretty much all attempts to get international flights going was kneecapped by customs and immigration because it was to far for them to drive to process passengers. Not hard to do the sums on how much income was lost because of bureaucrats that could not work a solution to their problem. Now decade and a half later another attempt probably same outcome.