Marina service
Echuca Moama Houseboats Marina
About
Echuca Moama Houseboats Marina at a glance
Houseboat hire operator based at a marina in Moama on the NSW bank of the Murray River, with a fleet of prestige and luxury houseboats, river cruisers and camping boats, secure guest parking and fuel supplied at cost.
Service area: Murray Riverina
- Marina type
- private/residential
- Operator
- Echuca Moama Houseboats
- Region
- Murray Riverina
- Water body
- Murray River
- Berth types
- permanent berthing
Facilities and services
- fuel
- houseboat hire
- river cruisers and camping boat hire
- free secure guest parking
- fuel at cost
- on-call refuelling
- insurance waiver
- Starlink wifi
- solar power systems
About Echuca Moama Houseboats Marina
Echuca Moama Houseboats runs its hire fleet from a private marina on the New South Wales bank of the Murray at Moama, placing guests on the water within minutes of the twin towns while keeping the base itself away from the riverfront congestion of the historic port precinct. The operation is built around a tiered fleet: Prestige twelve-berth houseboats at the top of the range, Luxury eight-to-ten berth boats, Escape houseboats, smaller river cruisers and the River Explorer, right down to a simple camping boat for budget trips. That spread lets the marina serve family reunion groups, couples and fishing mates alike, all driving on an ordinary car licence after a dockside induction. The business has invested visibly in self-sufficiency technology: the Prestige boats carry a 10kW solar array with dual inverters, the Luxury boats run 5kW of solar with lithium ferrous phosphate batteries, and all the recent boats carry Starlink wifi, so guests can work or stream from a river bend. The result is a quieter fleet with generator runtimes so reduced that some hirers return boats without the generator having run at all. The marina itself functions as a secure staging base: free locked parking for guests' cars, an on-call staff member who can bring hirers back to their vehicles mid-trip, and every boat fuelled and provisioned at the dock before departure. Rates are published openly by season and event weekend, which is unusual transparency for the industry. In a town crowded with houseboat operators, this one's identity rests on fleet modernity, solar technology and a no-fuss, driveway-to-river handover.
Marina facilities
The marina's services are organised around the hire handover. Check-in is at 3pm and departure at 10am, with late arrivals accommodated by arrangement. Every hirer receives a full induction: a walk through the boat's features, a practice run at the controls, an orientation to the river charts and the location of all safety gear, which is carried to Maritime NSW standards, plus help planning an itinerary. Parking is free and secure for the duration, and guests can return to their cars at any time by calling the on-call staff member to open the marina. Fuel policy is a genuine point of difference: all boats depart full and fuel is recharged at cost price with no handling fees. Published tank figures give a sense of consumption: Prestige boats carry 450 litres of petrol plus 110 litres of diesel for the generator, Escape boats 1,000 litres petrol and 300 litres diesel, Luxury boats 350 litres of each, river cruisers 110 litres, the River Explorer 80 litres and the camping boat 110 litres, with petrol burn around 10 to 15 litres per driving hour on the houseboats and 5 to 10 litres of diesel per generator day. If a boat runs low mid-trip, the team will organise refuelling. An insurance waiver option is offered at booking, and published rates span off-peak three-night weekends from around $2,000 on a ten-berth boat to premium event pricing such as $7,600 for a New Year's week, with Prestige twelve-berth boats topping out near $10,500 for the same period. Onboard equipment includes ensuited cabins, laundries, full kitchens, heated eight-person spas, barbecue decks, reversing cameras, GPS river charts and child-safe lockable gates, making the boats genuinely self-contained for week-long river expeditions.
Local sailing knowledge
The marina's Moama base sits on the same river reach that made Echuca the busiest inland port in colonial Australia, and guests typically cruise two directions. Upstream leads past the Moama foreshore and under the bridges to the Port of Echuca precinct, where the largest operating paddle-steamer fleet in the world works the wharf and the red-gum wharf structure itself is a museum piece; beyond that the river winds toward the Barmah Forest, though hire houseboats are not permitted past the Barmah Bridge. Downstream the character changes completely: the river opens into long straight reaches with low grassy banks and willows, favoured by water-skiers, and runs all the way to the Torrumbarry Weir pool. Skippers should respect the 4-knot zones near town and moored boats, keep a sharp eye for snags after floods, and remember that the river is shared with paddle steamers, ski boats and the odd emu on the bank. No boat licence is needed, only a current car licence, and the induction covers the rest. Provisioning is easy: Moama's supermarkets, bakery and bottle shops are minutes from the marina, and the club courtesy buses from Rich River Golf Club, Moama Bowling Club and the Echuca-Moama RSL will collect groups for dinner. The Perricoota wine district around Moama, with cellar doors like Morrisons Riverview and St Anne's, makes a popular half-day ashore. Murray cod and yellowbelly draw the anglers, sandy beaches downstream make natural overnight moorings, and summer bookings around Christmas, Easter and the Melbourne Cup sell out far ahead, as the published event pricing on the operator's rate card attests.