About
Upper Cabbage Tree Creek Yacht Club at a glance
Few Australian sailing clubs leave as faint a trace on the internet as Upper Cabbage Tree Creek Yacht Club. There is no club website to browse, no Facebook page to scroll, and no newspaper archive recording its races — a researcher in January 2026 found essentially nothing beyond official registers. What those registers do show is a small, genuine, affiliated sailing club on Brisbane's northern fringe. The club holds an Australian Business Number (79 435 915 072) as an unincorporated entity, active from 20 August 2020, with the business name registered a day later; it is not registered for GST, which fits a volunteer-run outfit of modest turnover. Its recorded location is postcode 4017, the patch of Brisbane's northside that takes in Shorncliffe, Sandgate and Deagon. Most tellingly, the club appears in Australian Sailing's affiliation schedule for Queensland, placed in category 21 — the fee band reserved for the smallest clubs in the national system, which it shares with outfits such as Warwick Sailing Club on the Darling Downs. That listing matters: whatever its size, this is a club recognised inside the sport's governing structure, not a casual gathering of mates with boats. The
Service area: Shorncliffe, QLD
- Club type
- Unspecified sailing club
- Australian Sailing
- Affiliated · 2025-26
- Primary classes
- Unspecified sailing club
- Kids learn to sail
- Available
About Upper Cabbage Tree Creek Yacht Club
Few Australian sailing clubs leave as faint a trace on the internet as Upper Cabbage Tree Creek Yacht Club. There is no club website to browse, no Facebook page to scroll, and no newspaper archive recording its races — a researcher in January 2026 found essentially nothing beyond official registers. What those registers do show is a small, genuine, affiliated sailing club on Brisbane's northern fringe. The club holds an Australian Business Number (79 435 915 072) as an unincorporated entity, active from 20 August 2020, with the business name registered a day later; it is not registered for GST, which fits a volunteer-run outfit of modest turnover. Its recorded location is postcode 4017, the patch of Brisbane's northside that takes in Shorncliffe, Sandgate and Deagon. Most tellingly, the club appears in Australian Sailing's affiliation schedule for Queensland, placed in category 21 — the fee band reserved for the smallest clubs in the national system, which it shares with outfits such as Warwick Sailing Club on the Darling Downs. That listing matters: whatever its size, this is a club recognised inside the sport's governing structure, not a casual gathering of mates with boats. The name itself works as a map reference, pointing to the tidal upper reaches of the creek that threads through Deagon and Sandgate before emptying into Bramble Bay. Everything else about the club's day-to-day life — its members, its boats, its rhythm — sits outside the public record, and this profile says so plainly rather than guess. That honesty, members of similar low-profile clubs would agree, serves a reader better than any padded entry.
Training and sailing programs
Nothing is published about training at Upper Cabbage Tree Creek Yacht Club. Searches turn up no Discover Sailing Centre accreditation, no Tackers junior program, no learn-to-sail courses, no raced classes and no regatta calendar — so this section cannot describe a program list, because none is on record. What can be offered instead is honest general context about how clubs of this size typically operate elsewhere in Queensland. A club in the smallest national affiliation band usually runs on a handful of committed volunteers, and sailing activity at that scale often means informal weekend racing or social sailing rather than a structured calendar, with handicaps arranged on the day and results chalked up afterwards. New sailors at small creek clubs are commonly welcomed aboard members' boats as crew — the oldest form of sail training there is — while anyone wanting a formal Australian Sailing course is generally pointed toward a larger accredited club nearby. In this club's case, two established neighbours sit within a short drive: Queensland Cruising Yacht Club and Sandgate Yacht Club, both at Shorncliffe and both entirely separate organisations. Whether Upper Cabbage Tree Creek Yacht Club runs anything resembling any of this is simply not documented. Prospective members, or families hunting junior training, would need to reach the club directly through the national affiliation register to learn what actually happens on the water. Until the club publishes more, its training story remains unwritten — and any account claiming otherwise would be invention. Should the club's members ever publish a program, this profile can be updated; in the meantime, the silence in the record is itself the most accurate description available. Small clubs also tend to lean on state-association visits, school-holiday coaching at neighbouring centres, and word-of-mouth recruiting at the local boat ramp — all general patterns, none of them confirmed here.
Sailing waters
The club's name does the locating. Cabbage Tree Creek is a tidal waterway on Brisbane's northside, flowing through Deagon, Sandgate and Shorncliffe before widening into Bramble Bay, the south-western corner of Moreton Bay. Sailing on the upper reaches, as the name implies, means sheltered creek water rather than open bay: narrow, tide-affected channels where local knowledge counts for more than raw boat speed. Some general context is worth spelling out, because the club itself publishes nothing about its sailing waters. Tidal creeks feeding Moreton Bay typically offer protected water in most weather, shallow flats to avoid around low tide, and afternoon sea breezes funnelled between mangrove-lined banks through the warmer months. The upper reach at Deagon holds its own place in Queensland sailing life: the Deagon Slipway there has long been used to haul and maintain racing yachts, including boats campaigned in events such as the Brisbane to Gladstone — though that is the slipway's story, not necessarily the club's. The creek is also home to two much larger, longer-established clubs: Queensland Cruising Yacht Club at 69 Sinbad Street, Shorncliffe, and Sandgate Yacht Club at 95 Allpass Parade, both distinct entities that should not be confused with this one. Beyond the creek mouth, Bramble Bay opens into the broader expanse of Moreton Bay, one of the great sheltered cruising grounds of Australia's east coast. A small club based on these upper reaches sits, geographically at least, at the gateway to all of it. The postcode on the ABN record, 4017, matches the Deagon end of the creek, which fits the word 'upper' in the club's name. For anyone trying to find the club in person, the boat ramps and foreshore reserves along the Sandgate to Shorncliffe stretch are the natural places to ask.
Club history
When the history of a club cannot be found, the honest thing is to say so. No founding year, no founders' names and no milestone moments for Upper Cabbage Tree Creek Yacht Club appear anywhere in the public record. The only fixed dates are administrative: the club's ABN became active on 20 August 2020 and its business name was registered the following day. Those are business registration dates, not proof of when the club actually formed — an unincorporated sailing group may operate informally for years before anyone registers a name, or the club may be genuinely young. The available sources cannot settle which. Some general context helps frame what kind of organisation this likely is. Brisbane's northside creeks have supported small-boat sailing for generations, and new clubs on them usually begin the same way: a few local boat owners start racing or rafting up together, the group acquires a name, and affiliation with Australian Sailing follows once the club wants formal recognition and a place in the national structure. Entry into the smallest affiliation fee band, where this club sits, suggests an organisation still at that modest scale. The creek it is named for already carries a documented boating heritage through the Deagon Slipway and the long-established Shorncliffe clubs — but that heritage belongs to those institutions, and it would be wrong to borrow it. Until a member writes the club's story down, its history stays exactly this short. That is a gap in the record, not a verdict on the club.