The search for the Island Caretaker - a six-month contract worth A$150,000 - was launched only on January 11, but overnight, over 200,000 have visited the www.islandreefjob.com website in the first 24 hours.
200,000 netizens have accessed over a million pages in the website and submitted over 200 applications.
Tourism Queensland's "Best job in the world" campaign offers the successful applicant the chance to to live rent-free on the Great Barrier Reef's Hamilton Island for six months in a multi-million-dollar oceanfront villa.
Regional Director Ms Lim Mui Khim, from Tourism Queensland's Southeast Asia office, said: 'This is one of the most ground-breaking tourism campaigns ever undertaken and while we knew it would be big, the global response in the first 24 hours has outstripped even our expectations.'
She adds, 'In fact, the response was so overwhelming and there was so much interest generated in such a short time that our website was inundated with hits, which unfortunately slowed it down considerably,' said Ms Lim. 'But thankfully the problems have now been rectified.'
Print advertisements will appear in the employment sections of major newspapers in various countries this week, including The Straits Times Recruit on Saturday 17 January.
'Our predictions are that the Tourism Queensland recruitment team will be working around the clock to go through the thousands of applications we expect to receive,' said Ms Lim.
