About
Pacific Harbour Marina at a glance
Marina within the Pacific Harbour golf-course community at Banksia Beach on Bribie Island's Pumicestone Passage coast. 82 mono and multihull berths to 18m with holding-tank pump-out, laundry, showers and security systems; fuel, chandlery, mechanic, travel lift, hardstands and dry cradle storage minutes away.
Service area: Moreton Bay
- Marina type
- full-service marina
- Operator
- Star Marinas Group
- Region
- Moreton Bay
- Water body
- Pumicestone Passage
- Wet berths
- 82
- Maximum vessel
- 18 m
- Berth types
- casual berthing, permanent berthing
Facilities and services
- fuel
- pump-out
- travel lift
- hardstand
- chandlery
- showers & laundry
- boat ramp
- 24/7 security
- wifi
- mechanic
- canopies & upholstery service
- dry cradle storage
- short-term berthing jetty
- berth sales
- billfish weigh station (RQYS)
About Pacific Harbour Marina
Pacific Harbour Marina sits at Banksia Beach on the northern end of Bribie Island, inside the Pacific Harbour golf-course and canal estate that lines this stretch of the Pumicestone Passage. It is a deliberately quiet marina: 82 berths behind security gates, with the Glass House Mountains rising across the passage on the mainland horizon and no industrial boatyard cluttering the foreshore, because the heavy services were placed a few minutes away by design. The marina opened in the mid-2000s under the Star Marinas Group, which also ran Tin Can Bay and offered berth holders credit usable across its three marinas, an unusual loyalty arrangement at the time. From the outset the marina angled for the game-fishing and cruising market; the Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron adopted it as a northern base for sports fishing and installed a weighing station for billfish competitions, and the calm, all-weather character of the Pumicestone Passage Marine Park did the rest of the selling. Berth holders tend to be a mix of golf-estate residents, Brisbane boaties who keep their hulls an hour up the highway, and cruisers pausing on the passage between Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast. The estate around it supplies the land-side life: the Pacific Harbour Golf and Country Club wraps the marina, and surf club and RSL dining are close by. What the marina lacks in scale it makes up for in setting, and its original sales pitch of all-weather boating with no dangerous bars to cross still holds true for anyone approaching Moreton Bay from the south.
Marina facilities
The marina provides 82 wet berths taking monohulls and multihulls from 10 to 18 metres, on both casual and permanent terms; advertised rates at opening started from thirty dollars a day, one hundred and forty a week and just under four thousand a year, with berths also offered for sale priced on application according to length and beam. Berth infrastructure includes power and water, a holding-tank pump-out facility, a short-term berthing jetty for visitors, and security access control with fire-mitigation systems monitored around the clock. Landside amenity covers showers and restrooms, a laundry, wireless internet and a car park, and a boat ramp serves trailer boats. The deliberate quirk of Pacific Harbour is that the noisy services are off-site but close: a comprehensive maintenance and refuelling facility a few minutes away provides the fuel berth, chandlery, mechanic, travel lift, hardstands and dry cradle storage, so berth holders get full-service capability without living next to a grinding shed, and canopy and upholstery work is available through an on-site service arrangement. When the marina opened, Star Marinas sketched plans for an entertainment and retail marina village with a mini-market, deli, bakery, newsagent, bottle shop, hairdresser and waterfront dining; the precinct has grown more slowly than those early plans suggested, so day-to-day provisioning relies on the Banksia Beach shops and the golf club, surf club and RSL for meals. The marina office can be reached on 07 3408 7827 for berthing enquiries. For game-fishing visitors, the RQYS billfish weigh station operates during competitions, and the passage's calm water makes bait rigging and tender work straightforward at the berth.
Local sailing knowledge
The Pumicestone Passage is the defining local fact. This shallow, tidal channel between Bribie Island and the mainland runs roughly 35 kilometres from Caloundra in the north to Deception Bay in the south, and while it is sheltered in almost all weather, it demands attention to the chart: shifting sand shoals, strong tidal streams at the narrow points, and depths that drop away quickly outside the marked channel. The northern entrance over the Caloundra bar is notorious and best avoided by strangers; locals heading to Moreton Bay simply run south inside the passage and out past Bribie's southern tip, which is what the no-dangerous-bars pitch actually means. Fishing is the main recreation, with flathead, whiting and bream on the sandbanks, mud crabs in the creeks, and pelagics off Cape Moreton once you are outside; the passage itself is a marine park with green zones, so check the zoning map before dropping a pot. Anchorages inside the passage are plentiful and quiet, and a run across the bay reaches Tangalooma, Peel Island or the Sandhills in easy day-sail range. Ashore, Bribie offers 30 kilometres of ocean beach for four-wheel-driving, national park and state forest walking, and the Banksia Beach foreshore for a leg stretch; Brisbane's airports are about 45 minutes away, which is why so many berth holders commute from the city. Weekend traffic on the Bribie bridge can be slow on holiday afternoons, so provisioning runs are best done early. The golf club's bistro is the default dinner when you cannot be bothered cooking aboard.