About
Koolewong Marina at a glance
Boutique modern marina on Brisbane Water with 50 secure berths for vessels up to 25m, daily on-site supervision and premium safety systems, minutes from Gosford.
Service area: Central Coast
- Marina type
- full-service marina
- Operator
- Koolewong Marina
- Region
- Central Coast
- Water body
- Brisbane Water
- Wet berths
- 50
- Maximum vessel
- 25 m
- Berth types
- casual berthing, permanent berthing
Facilities and services
- 24/7 security
- power & water
- pump-out
- en-suite amenities
- launderette
- customer lounge
- wifi
- restaurant & cafe
- boat sales/brokerage
- 5 Gold Anchor
- Clean Marina Level 3
- near rail station
About Koolewong Marina
Koolewong Marina is the newest facility on Brisbane Water, opened in February 2017 on a greenfield site in Murphys Bay where the Brisbane Water National Park comes down to the estuary's edge between Koolewong and Tascott. Developers Les Binkin and Symantha Suprain spent sixteen years in the marina business, including the purchase of Marmong Point on Lake Macquarie, before building Koolewong from scratch, and the result shows the benefit of starting clean: fifty floating berths on wide piers, individual en-suite style amenities, integrated public boardwalks and native landscaping that kept the bush setting intact. Recognition followed quickly. The marina earned Five Gold Anchors from the Marina Industries Association in 2021, a grading only about one in ten assessed marinas reaches, and the same year took out the national Marina of the Year award for facilities under 140 berths, announced on the same night Binkin confirmed the sale of the business to Toby and Ned O'Neill of Point Piper and Rose Bay Marinas. The Boathouse Restaurant, a long-standing local landmark incorporated into the development, feeds berth holders and the public over the water, with live music on Sunday afternoons. The clientele mixes Central Coast locals, Sydney owners who want a secure pen an hour from the CBD, and cruising boats staging for Broken Bay and the Hawkesbury. The design deliberately opened the foreshore to the public, with boardwalks threading the native landscaping so locals share the water's edge rather than being fenced out, an approach the MIA auditors singled out when awarding the gold anchor grading.
Marina facilities
The fifty floating berths run from twelve metres up to thirty and explicitly cater for multihulls as well as monohull cruisers and motor yachts, with shore power and water at every berth. A vessel pump-out system is built in, and the marina holds Level 3 International Clean Marina accreditation, the environmental strand of its design. Amenities go beyond the usual shower block: individual en-suite style bathrooms, a launderette, a customer lounge, wifi, parking and the on-site restaurant and cafe, all maintained by a supervisor present seven days a week. Security runs to high-spec monitored systems and controlled access, reflecting the marina's pitch at long-term berth holders leaving valuable boats unattended. Industry listings for the site record a fuller commercial ecosystem than the berth count suggests: boat sales and brokerage, chandlery, marine electronics, engineering and rigging services, sail repair and tuition have all been associated with the facility, and the owners' group also operates Point Piper and Rose Bay Marinas on Sydney Harbour, giving berth holders a small network. Casual berthing is offered when space allows, with bookings essential in peak season. What the marina does not have is a travel lift, slipway or fuel wharf; haul-out work goes to yards at Booker Bay or Gosford, and fuel is taken at Booker Bay Marina or the Central Coast Marina fuel wharf a few miles up the estuary. Berth enquiries are handled directly, with long-term stays the stated specialty. Berthing terms cover casual, short-term and long-term stays, with the long-stay market the stated focus, and the supervisor on duty daily handles arrivals, lines and local advice. The owners' group network means berth holders can sometimes arrange reciprocal short stays at the group's Sydney Harbour marinas by negotiation.
Local sailing knowledge
Murphys Bay lies on the western shore of Brisbane Water about midway between Gosford and the Rip Bridge, and Koolewong railway station sits a couple of hundred metres behind the marina, a genuinely rare combination that lets crews commute to a boat by train from Sydney in about an hour and a quarter. The estuary itself is broad, shallow in patches and well marked; keep inside the channel markers off the mooring fields and mind the oyster leases that line parts of the shore. Tidal range is modest but the current runs noticeably at the bridge. Broken Bay and the open sea are less than an hour away, and the classic weekend loop runs under the Rip Bridge, up the Hawkesbury past Dangar Island, or across to Pittwater. On board, watch for the afternoon nor'easter that sweeps the estuary in summer; the marina's western-shore position knocks the worst of it down. Ashore, Woy Woy's shops and pubs are a ten-minute walk south, Gosford is ten minutes by road, and the national park behind the marina offers the Piles Creek and Great North Walk tracks for leg-stretching. The Woy Woy waterfront is famous for its pelican feeding, and local fishing produces flathead, bream and whiting over the flats. Sunday lunch at the Boathouse, with the music going, is the marina's social fixture. Koolewong has no shops of its own beyond the marina's restaurant, so provisioning happens at Woy Woy, where a full supermarket, hardware and marine supplies line the main street. The shared pathway along the foreshore makes the walk pleasant, and weekend trains run roughly hourly both directions.