Geo answer

For today’s Geo Quiz, we’re searching the Australian outback for a town that has been the scene of some controversy this week.

This is a mining town, in the state of Queensland. It’s just over eleven hundred miles north-west of Brisbane.

It’s the main administrative, commercial and industrial center for the region. But there’s a problem. The town’s mayor says there’s about “five blokes to every girl” there.

That makes for a lot of lonely bachelors. So mayor John Molony came up with an idea: He was quoted saying: “We should find out where there are beauty-disadvantaged women, and ask them to proceed” to the town.

photo by Michael Rogersphoto by Michael Rogers

He said the ones who are already there seem to be enjoying themselves.

The mayor says he only wanted to fix his town’s problem. But he wound up sparking a firestorm of criticism.

So what’s the name of this Queensland town?

You only have one romantic verse to think about it…

OK, enough with the romance.

We’re looking for a mining town in the northwest of Queensland, Australia. The answer is: Mount Isa.

Betty Kieran is the State Member of Parliament for Mount Isa. She says women and men there took offense at the Mayor’s remarks.

?They in fact last night in Mount Isa held a rally, some 200 people turned up at that. people were very very angry and upset.?

Kieran says Mount Isa may be an outback city, but it’s a “cosmopolitan” one. And she says women there hold all kinds of jobs.

?Female engineers, female geologists, female truck drivers. We welcome everyone from everywhere. And you know I think we haven’t lost the great sense of humour that we do have because we do come from the Outback and I don’t know that we are being precious about this. The reality I have to say is that the community has stood up very, very strongly against this, they don’t want to be portrayed as sexist rednecks quite frankly.?

One local woman even said the men there aren’t such prizes. She added when it comes to the available ones in Mount Isa “the odds are good, but the goods are odd.”

So that made us wonder, what does the offending mayor look like?

?laugh…..look, ha-ha-ha, he’s an average sort of looking chap, he’s quite tall, he’s getting on in years. You’re posing that question… ha-ha-ha I have to actually think. People are people and I think this is the point we’re all trying to make which is that measuring a person by the way they look is really outdated 1950s thinking.?

That’s Betty Kieran, of Mount Isa in Queensland Australia, the answer to our quiz.