Marina service
Fingal Boat Harbour
About
Fingal Boat Harbour at a glance
Small public boat harbour at Fingal Head on the lower Tweed River with a jetty and two-lane boat ramp, plus a separate commercial jetty with unleaded fuel; used by local fishers and Fingal Rovers SLSC craft.
Service area: Far North Coast
- Marina type
- government/transport wharf-marina
- Operator
- Tweed Shire Council / NSW Crown Lands
- Region
- Far North Coast
- Water body
- Tweed River
- Berth types
- casual berthing
Facilities and services
- boat ramp
- two-lane all-tide concrete ramp
- commercial fuel jetty (unleaded)
- fish cleaning table
- surf club base
- Cook Island dive access
- free pump-out nearby (Foysters Jetty)
About Fingal Boat Harbour
Fingal Boat Harbour is a small public harbour on the lower Tweed River at Fingal Head, barely two kilometres upstream from the river mouth and directly beneath one of the most photographed headlands on the Tweed Coast. The headland itself is capped by the Fingal Head lighthouse, the oldest public building in the Tweed, and its foot is a basalt causeway of polygonal columns left by an ancient lava flow, drawing walkers and photographers at dawn and dusk. The harbour exists to serve practical boating: local fishers running out to the reefs and Cook Island, dive and snorkel boats heading for the island's marine reserve, and the craft of Fingal Rovers Surf Life Saving Club, which has rowed and paddled from this riverbank for generations. Tweed Shire Council actually lists two facilities here, the Old and New Fingal Boat Harbour ramps, separated by a foreshore reserve with barbecues, a playground and picnic tables. A short way along the riverbank a separate commercial jetty sells unleaded fuel, a rare convenience on this stretch of river. The precinct had a tidy-up in 2023 when Crown Lands spent $15,000 removing a dilapidated timber jetty and pontoon and clearing out a derelict kiosk site beside the ramp, protecting the seagrass beds by dismantling the structure from land. Nothing here is polished, but as a jumping-off point for Cook Island and the Tweed River estuary it is hard to beat, with whales visible from the headland between May and November. Whale watchers line the headland through the migration months, giving the small harbour a steady audience for every departure and return across the bar.
Marina facilities
The harbour's plant is straightforward public infrastructure. The New Fingal Boat Harbour ramp is a two-lane concrete ramp in salt water, usable at all tides according to the Transport for NSW boat ramp registry (ID 182, owned by Tweed Shire Council and rated in good condition), with 21 to 50 car-and-trailer spaces, toilets, a fish-cleaning table, lighting, barbecues and bins, and a pontoon and jetty close by for setting down passengers and gear. The Old Fingal Boat Harbour ramp, listed separately by council, takes overflow and small craft. The commercial jetty along the riverbank dispenses unleaded fuel to vessels, the only on-water fuel point at Fingal; there is no diesel berth, no pump-out, no showers and no power or water pedestals, and no dedicated rinse facilities, which dive operators note means washing gear back at the shop. Council permits flushing of outboard motors with fresh water at its ramps. For anything beyond these basics, the network of council facilities upriver fills gaps: Foysters Jetty at Tweed Heads, a timber wharf with two floating pontoons about 100 metres south of the Boyds Bay Bridge, provides a free vessel sewage pump-out and an emergency-repairs berth with a four-hour limit, arranged through the council Waterways Unit on 02 6670 2400. The Sheoak Shack, a gallery cafe with river views, live music and coffee, sits opposite the ramp area and functions as the de facto clubhouse for waiting crews, and the Fingal Rovers SLSC occupies its shed beside the harbour. The foreshore reserve between the ramp sites carries picnic tables, a playground and the public toilet block, so trailer crews can stage a full family day out of the one precinct.
Local sailing knowledge
Everything at Fingal is conditioned by the Tweed River bar. The entrance between the training walls is dredged and well marked, but it shoals and breaks in any size of swell and has a serious reputation; Cook Island dive charters that normally make the 15 to 20 minute run from this ramp will cancel or reroute via the Gold Coast Seaway, a 55-minute trip, when the bar is breaking. Check conditions, time the tide and do not follow a bigger boat out blindly. Once outside, Cook Island lies less than a kilometre offshore with public moorings over its dive sites: turtles at the cleaning stations on the north wall, wobbegongs and blind sharks in the caves, leopard sharks on the summer sand flats and migrating humpbacks passing May to November. Inside the bar, the river runs calm past Chinderah, where a floating jetty serves the tavern and seafood shop, up to the historic village of Tumbulgum; a council navigational map of the whole estuary is worth downloading. Pelicans work the fish-cleaning table at cleaning time and the river flats are good for flathead and whiting. Ashore, Fingal Head village is tiny, so provision in Tweed Heads or Kingscliff before arriving; parking at the ramp is free but fills early on calm weekends. Walk the causeway at low tide for the basalt columns, and allow time for the lighthouse track, whose lookout over Cook Island explains in one glance why this small harbour punches so far above its size. Dive boats are not the only regulars; offshore fishing crews run out for snapper and pelagics on the close reefs, returning to clean the catch at the ramp tables.