Sydney  - The Brisbane judging panel said Thursday it was investigating press reports that one of the 50 candidates it shortlisted for the dream job of caretaker on a paradise island in Australia's Great Barrier Reef worked as a porn star.

Britain's scandal-mongering The Sun newspaper alleged that Russian police had interviewed Julia Yalovitsyna for her links with erotic film studios in her hometown of Petrazavodsk.

"We are taking the claims made in the media seriously and are currently investigating the matter," a spokeswoman for the state government department running the innovative tourism promotion campaign said. "Tourism Queensland will decide on a course of action once we have accurate information."

An astonishing 34,634 applicants were left clinging to the hope of being the sole wildcard entry when the Top 50 was named last month. The 11 finalists will be named and flown to Queensland's Hamilton Island in May.

The Top 50 - from Britain, the United States, Japan, Canada, Germany, Greece, India, China, Russia and 13 other countries - were selected on the creativity of the
60-second video-clip applications they submitted.

Like many of the women who applied, Yalovitsyna was bikini-clad in her pitch for the six-month posting.

If successful, she'll be required to clean a swimming pool, feed fish and produce a blog to relay to the world her impressions of Hamilton as a holiday destination.

The dream job, though real, is essentially the hook in a tourism promotion campaign. Yalovitsyna and the rest of the Top 50 can be viewed on the islandreefjob. com website. (dpa)