Marina service
Brooklyn Marina
About
Brooklyn Marina at a glance
Marina at 45 Brooklyn Road, Brooklyn, with berths and moorings, fuel and water, visitor berthing, on-site accommodation and a general store near Brooklyn's cafes and restaurants.
Service area: Hawkesbury River
- Marina type
- full-service marina
- Operator
- Brooklyn Marina
- Region
- Hawkesbury River
- Water body
- Hawkesbury River
- Berth types
- permanent berthing, casual berthing, swing moorings
Facilities and services
- fuel
- power & water
- restaurant/cafe
- houseboat and BBQ boat hire
- Yamaha outboard dealership
- shipwright restorations
- slipping and antifouling
- visitor berths
- station pickup
- swing moorings
About Brooklyn Marina
Brooklyn Marina at 45 Brooklyn Road is the most complete boating base on the lower Hawkesbury River, an hour north of Sydney where the river cuts through sandstone gorge country ringed by national park. The marina combines four businesses on the one waterfront: berths and swing moorings for the local fleet, a full shipwright and mechanical yard trading as Brooklyn Marine Services, the lower Hawkesbury's authorised Yamaha dealership, and Hawkesbury Afloat, a hire operation whose houseboats, barbecue boats and tinnies put first-timers onto the river by the dozen every weekend. That mix gives the place an unusual energy - permanent berth holders and timber boat restoration projects share the pontoons with houseboat parties loading eskies for a week upstream. Brooklyn village itself is a small, slightly timeless river settlement beneath the freeway and rail bridges, famous for oysters until QX disease wiped out the Sydney rock stocks in 2004, and still the provisioning and fuelling point for the whole lower river. For cruising boats, Brooklyn Marina is the natural staging post: Broken Bay and Pittwater lie downstream, the national park anchorages of Cowan Creek are next door, and the navigable river winds more than 50 nautical miles inland toward Windsor. The marina's longevity on Brooklyn Road gives it a settled, knowledgeable feel; staff handle everything from a timber cruiser restoration to a family's first houseboat weekend with the same practical manner, and the customer base spans Sydney weekenders, long-term liveaboards and commercial operators working the river. Few river marinas anywhere in New South Wales pack this range onto one waterfront.
Marina facilities
Berthing covers permanent pens, casual visitor berths and swing moorings, with fuel and water on the wharf, onshore bathroom facilities and parking for customers; cruising directory figures, dated but indicative, quote berths at $14.50 per foot per month and moorings at $6 per foot per month with a $170 minimum. The technical side is handled by Brooklyn Marine Services: shipwrights for repairs, restorations, fit-outs and boat-building, mechanical work on all makes of inboard and outboard, marine electrical, and full slipping and antifouling services. As the authorised Yamaha dealer for the lower Hawkesbury, the marina stocks outboards from portable two-strokes to large four-strokes, holds genuine parts, and services other brands as well. Hawkesbury Afloat rounds out the offer with a hire fleet that needs no licence: houseboats sleeping two to twelve, barbecue boats for up to ten, family boats for five, forward-steering tinnies for four, a picnic punt for twelve and a 5.9-metre commercial punt rated for eleven passengers. Hire boats come with a full briefing, and houseboat fuel is charged by engine hours, which hirers can read off a gauge. The marina will collect arriving hirers from Hawkesbury River station for a small fee - noting that the marina at the station is a different business - and water refills at the wharf are free for hire customers. Casual visitors are advised to phone ahead, particularly through summer and holiday periods when the pens fill with the home fleet and hire turnarounds crowd the wharf on changeover days. The general store and accommodation options listed in cruising directories put basic provisioning and a bed within the marina precinct, though most crews walk the few minutes into Brooklyn village for a broader choice of meals and supplies.
Local sailing knowledge
Brooklyn sits inside the bridges: yachts must pass under the rail bridge, with 11.8 metres clearance at mean high water springs, to reach the marina strip along Brooklyn Road, so taller masts stop here or stay outside. Tides on the Hawkesbury run hard - the whole estuary flushes twice daily - and swimming is best kept to the bays rather than mid-river. Houseboat hirers are bounded by an imaginary line between Juno Point and Challenger Head downstream and Spencer upstream, with hefty fines beyond it. The village supplies the basics: the Anglers Rest hotel has an ATM and bottle shop, a general store sells groceries, bait, tackle, ice and the only roadside petrol in town, and cafes do fish and chips and coffee within a short walk of the wharf. Local colour runs deep: the Riverboat Postman still delivers mail to river settlements on weekdays, Dangar Island opposite is a car-free community with a no-wash zone, and Brooklyn oysters are back on menus, now mostly Pacific varieties after the QX disaster. Cruising grounds are immediate - Cowan Creek's anchorages a few kilometres downstream, Jerusalem Bay for the night, Cottage Point for a meal - which is why so many Sydney boats base here year-round rather than on the harbour. Mornings see pelicans and sea eagles working the channel off the marina, and the tide's behaviour around the bridges - hard runs, back eddies near the pylons - is the first lesson new berth holders learn. Weekend traffic on the M1 can stretch the 'one hour from Sydney' claim, so hire customers are told to allow an extra hour on Friday afternoons.