Best Marinas in Australia: An East Coast Cruising Guide

Australia's east coast is one of the great cruising runs — roughly 2,000 nautical miles from Sydney Harbour to the top of the Great Barrier Reef, with sheltered water, working marinas and a refit yard within a day's sail of almost anywhere along it.

It is also the coast where the calendar matters more than the chart. Get the season right and the east coast is as easy as cruising gets. Get it wrong and you are looking for a cyclone-rated berth in February along with everybody else.

This guide runs south to north, and ends with the practical things a marina will ask you before it can quote.

First, the season — because it governs everything else

North of about Gladstone, the tropical cyclone season runs November to April. That single fact shapes berth availability, insurance and price across the whole northern half of the coast.

• Insurance almost always has a "cyclone zone" clause. Many policies require the boat to be south of a stated latitude — commonly around 25°S, near Bundaberg — between November and April, or hauled out, or in a marina with a cyclone mooring plan. Read the policy before you book the berth, not after.
• Marinas know this and price accordingly. A Whitsundays berth is easiest to get in the wet season and hardest in July. The southern Queensland and New South Wales marinas see the reverse.
• The winter migration is real. Boats move north from about May and back south from October, so the busy months in Airlie Beach and Cairns are the dry, settled ones — June to September.

If you are planning a season rather than a passage, that rhythm is the thing to plan around.

Sydney Harbour and Pittwater

Sydney Harbour is the obvious starting point and the hardest place on the coast to find a permanent berth. Demand is chronic, the waiting lists at the best-known clubs are measured in years, and swing moorings are tightly controlled.

What that means in practice is that the harbour rewards flexibility. The Cruising Yacht Club of Australia at Rushcutters Bay, Middle Harbour Yacht Club at Mosman, d'Albora Marina The Spit and Birkenhead Point Marina in the inner west each serve different parts of the harbour and different sorts of boat, and availability moves between them rather than across all of them at once.

An hour north, Pittwater is the locals' answer. Newport, Church Point and the Hawkesbury approaches offer genuinely sheltered water, a shorter run to open sea than the harbour, and marinas such as the Royal Motor Yacht Club at Newport, d'Albora Marinas Akuna Bay and Empire Marina Bobbin Head tucked up the creeks. For a boat that does not need to be in the city, Pittwater is very often the better berth.

Browse what is listed: [Sydney Harbour](/berths/sydney-harbour) · [Pittwater](/berths/pittwater)

The run north — Newcastle, Port Stephens, Coffs

The New South Wales coast between Sydney and the Queensland border is a passage coast: good harbours a comfortable day apart, and far less competition for a berth than the city.

Newcastle Marina sits in a commercial port with deep water and easy access. Port Stephens Marina at Nelson Bay is the natural overnight stop and a pleasant place to be weather-bound. Lake Macquarie Yacht Club serves the largest coastal saltwater lake in Australia, an under-rated cruising ground in its own right. Further north, Coffs Harbour International Marina is the last properly sheltered all-weather harbour before the border.

For a boat heading north in May, these are the marinas worth booking rather than hoping for.

The Gold Coast and the Broadwater

The Gold Coast holds Australia's densest concentration of marina berths and refit yards, and it is where most long-distance boats end up when they need work done.

The Broadwater, the Coomera River and Runaway Bay between them offer everything from superyacht hardstand to a modest pen for a trailerable. Gold Coast City Marina, Horizon Shores, Hope Harbour, Marina Mirage and the Runaway Bay and Coomera marinas are the names that come up most often, and the concentration means that if one is full another is usually not.

It is also the most practical place on the coast to leave a boat for a southern summer while you are elsewhere.

Browse what is listed: [the Gold Coast](/berths/gold-coast)

Moreton Bay and Brisbane

Moreton Bay is sheltered, shallow in places and busier than it looks. Manly, on the bay's southern shore, is the centre of it — the Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron, d'Albora East Coast Marina and Wynnum Manly Yacht Club are all within a short walk of each other, which makes Manly one of the easiest places in Australia to compare berths in person.

North of the river, Scarborough Marina on the Redcliffe peninsula gives quicker access to the bay and to the run north, and Mooloolaba on the Sunshine Coast is the usual first or last stop for boats crossing the Wide Bay Bar.

Bundaberg, the Fraser Coast and the cyclone line

Bundaberg Port Marina matters out of proportion to its size: it is the arrival port for boats coming from New Caledonia and Vanuatu, and it sits close to the latitude many insurers use for the cyclone season. For a lot of cruisers, Bundaberg is where the decision to go further north gets made.

Great Sandy Straits Marina at Hervey Bay covers the inside passage behind Fraser Island — protected water, whales in season, and a good place to wait out a blow.

The Whitsundays and the Reef

This is the stretch most people picture. Coral Sea Marina at Airlie Beach is the mainland base and the jumping-off point for the islands; Hamilton Island Marina is the best-known island berth and books out well ahead in the dry season.

Further north, Mackay Marina is a large, sheltered, all-weather harbour that is frequently the easiest berth to get in the region, and Bowen offers a smaller, quieter alternative with a yacht club that takes visitors.

If you are cruising the reef rather than staying put, the pattern that works is a mainland base with a berth you can return to, and the islands done in stretches from it.

Townsville, Magnetic Island and the far north

Townsville is the practical capital of the northern coast — services, flights, and a proper cyclone-rated harbour. Across the channel, Nelly Bay Marina on Magnetic Island offers a very different sort of berth: small, sheltered, and a short ferry from the mainland.

At the top end, Cairns Marlin Marina sits in the middle of town with the reef an hour offshore, and Port Douglas Marina is the last full-service marina before the Cape. Both are busy from June to September and quiet in the wet.

Melbourne, Port Phillip and Tasmania

Away from the east coast run, Port Phillip offers a large, enclosed cruising ground with Williamstown, St Kilda and the Docklands berths all within the bay, and a very different climate — cold, reliable sea breezes and no cyclone season at all.

South again, Hobart and the Derwent are the gateway to some of the best and least crowded cruising in the country, and the marinas there are correspondingly small. If you are planning a Southern Ocean departure, Tasmania is where it starts.

Browse what is listed: [Melbourne and Port Phillip](/berths/melbourne-port-phillip)

What an Australian marina will ask before it can quote you

Marinas here are more standardised than in Europe, and the questions are consistent. Have these ready and you will get a straight answer in one exchange rather than three:

1. Length overall, in metres — and be honest about it. Pens are sized to the metre and a boat that overhangs is charged for the next size up, or turned away.
2. Beam. In a marina built for monohulls, beam is what decides whether a catamaran fits at all.
3. Draft. Moreton Bay, the Broadwater and much of the inside passage are shallow, and a boat drawing over about 2 metres has meaningfully fewer options.
4. Your dates, and whether you want to live aboard. Many Australian marinas do not permit liveaboard at all, and those that do usually cap the number — it is worth asking first rather than last.
5. Insurance. Most marinas require a current certificate, and in the tropics they will want to see the cyclone-season terms.

We wrote more about why those four numbers matter in [the four numbers every marina needs before they can quote you](/blog/the-four-numbers-every-marina-needs-before-they-can-quote-you).

Getting a real answer

The frustrating part of finding an Australian berth is rarely the cruising — it is that availability is not published anywhere, and the only way to find out is to ask each marina individually and wait.

That is the problem BerthFinder exists to solve: tell us the boat, the area and the dates once, and we put the question to the marinas in that area and bring their answers back to you in their own words.

[Get berth quotes for Australia](/get-quotes)