Marina service
Tweed River Marine
About
Tweed River Marine at a glance
Boatyard and dry storage facility on the Tweed River about 10 minutes from Gold Coast Airport, offering boat, trailer and truck storage, DIY or professional maintenance and a private boat ramp.
Service area: Far North Coast
- Marina type
- dry stack
- Operator
- Tweed River Marine
- Region
- Far North Coast
- Water body
- Tweed River
Facilities and services
- hardstand
- repairs & maintenance
- boat ramp
- truck & trailer storage
- container storage
- jet ski storage
- slipway
- 24/7 gated access
- DIY maintenance space
- private boat ramp
About Tweed River Marine
Tweed River Marine is a working boatyard and storage yard rather than a marina in the conventional sense, sitting on the Tweed River frontage of the Tweed Valley Way at Chinderah, roughly ten minutes' drive south of Gold Coast Airport. The site has a genuine boatbuilding pedigree: the yard and its slipway were for many years the home of Blackwatch Boats and Perry Catamarans, two names well known in Australian production boatbuilding, and that heritage shows in the layout, which is built around a hardstand and river access rather than wet berthing. In recent years the business has repositioned itself as an affordable, no-frills storage and maintenance base, advertising what it claims are the best hardstand prices in the country and backing that with flexible weekly, fortnightly or monthly payment options and no lock-in contracts. The change of ownership, with new owner Chris credited by long-term customers with a string of practical improvements in a short period, has kept the yard's DIY-friendly culture intact; owners who like to do their own work are explicitly welcomed, and tradespeople can be brought in as needed. The customer mix reflects the location on the far North Coast hard against the Queensland border: trailer boats and jet skis from Tweed Heads, Banora Point and Kingscliff, bigger cruising boats stored between seasons, and even trucks, trailers and containers, since the yard rents space for just about anything on wheels or hulls. Chinderah itself is a small riverside village, and the yard is one of its few commercial marine operations, which gives it a local, unhurried character that owners remark on. For anyone who wants a cheap, secure base with a private ramp onto one of the north coast's most useful rivers, it fills a niche that the glossy Gold Coast facilities do not.
Marina facilities
The core product is secure open-air storage on a spacious, fully gated hardstand with 24-hour access for customers. The yard takes vessels of any size, along with trailers, jet skis, trucks and containers, offered on short or long-term arrangements, with payment weekly, fortnightly or monthly to suit the owner and no lock-in contracts. A private boat ramp on the site lets storage customers launch and retrieve directly onto the Tweed River without queuing at the public ramps, which is the yard's single biggest practical advantage: a boat can go from hardstand to the river's ski lanes and fishing reaches in minutes. Maintenance is deliberately flexible. Owners can run their own DIY program on the hardstand with access to the amenities needed for the job, or bring in professional trades; the yard's long association with boatbuilding means contractors familiar with fibreglass, mechanical and fitout work know the site well. The old slipway infrastructure remains part of the operation, a legacy of the Blackwatch and Perry years. Security is pitched as a selling point: the site is fully fenced and gated, yet customers can get to their boat or vehicle at any hour, which matters for early starts to the bar or late returns. Pricing is not published, but the operator guarantees rates well under competitors and invites comparison; enquiries go through a freecall number, 1800 427 246, and the office keeps extended hours, 7am to 5pm weekdays and from 8am Sundays. What the yard does not offer is equally clear: no wet berths, no fuel wharf, no ship's chandlery and no amenity block. It is a storage and work yard, pure and simple, and its rates reflect that stripped-back model, which is precisely why budget-conscious owners from both sides of the border use it.
Local sailing knowledge
Chinderah sits on the lower Tweed River about six kilometres upstream from the river mouth at Tweed Heads, and the boating it serves is overwhelmingly river and estuary based. The river here is tidal and wide, with marked channels running upstream past the Tweed Valley Way bridge toward Murwillumbah for shallow-draft craft, and designated ski lanes that make the lower river popular with waterskiers and wakeboarders on weekends. Fishing is the other big draw: bream, flathead, whiting and mangrove jack work the banks and oyster racks, and mud crabs are taken in the creeks. Offshore access is via the Tweed River entrance, where a training-wall entrance has made the bar far more reliable than in the past, though it still demands respect on an ebb tide against a big easterly swell; locals time crossings for the top of the tide and check the bar cameras before committing. Cruising destinations within an easy day include the Terranora and Cobaki Broadwaters on the southern side and, through the inlet systems, the southern Gold Coast waterways to the north. Ashore, Chinderah is a quiet village with a tavern overlooking the water, the much-praised Cubby Bakehouse for breakfast, and marine-themed antique shops along the old highway; Kingscliff's cafes and supermarkets are a few minutes south, and Tweed Heads supplies the serious provisioning. Fingal Head and its basalt Giant's Causeway are just across the river mouth. The yard's location ten minutes from Gold Coast Airport also makes it a handy fly-in base for owners who keep a boat on the hardstand between visits. Note that the riverbank here has seen repeated development battles over dry marina proposals, so the area's boating facilities remain limited; securing storage at an established yard with its own ramp is a practical advantage in a village where public ramp parking is tight.