Sydney - Some applications posted on an Australian government website advertising a high-paying job looking after a tropical island on the Great Barrier Reef were fakes, red-faced officials admitted Monday.

A 60-second video applications for the position of Hamilton Island caretaker was of a young woman having a tattoo etched in her arm declaring her love for the Great Barrier Reef.

The woman was an advertising agency employee and the supposed tattoo was only a transfer. Media outlets around the world reported the bogus application as genuine.

"The simple answer is that we messed up," Tourism Queensland chief executive Anthony Hayes said. "We did two example videos of what an application could look like but we didn't put the words 'example' or 'sample' on those videos and as a result we have caused some confusion."

There have been more than a million hits to the islandreefjob website and more than 6,000 video clips have been received from applicants.

The successful jobseeker gets a six-figure pay packet and rent-free luxury accommodation for six months.

Eleven short-listed candidates will get round-trip airfares for the final interviews in May and the winner a further set of tickets for the July
1 start.

Sydney-based advertising and marketing internet blog Mumbrella, which exposed the trickery, warned that Queensland could damage its brand by engaging in deception.

"If the video is a fake, does that mean the holiday is fake as well?" said Mumbrella chief editor Tim Burroughs. "Consumers start asking themselves how far they can trust brands that treat them in this way." (dpa)