Augusta Boat Harbour

About the marina

Augusta Boat Harbour sits at Flat Rock on the southern shore of Flinders Bay, about halfway between the Augusta townsite and the Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse, and it holds a distinction no other Western Australian facility can claim: it is the only established safe short-term boating harbour along the roughly 430 kilometres of exposed coastline between Busselton and Albany. Opened in November 2014 after construction that began in October 2011, the harbour cost about $36.4 million, funded largely through the Royalties for Regions program with contributions from the Recreational Boating Facilities Scheme and the Department of Transport's Maritime Facilities Program. Two rock breakwaters enclose 2.8 hectares of sheltered water beside five hectares of reclaimed land, replacing a dangerous reliance on the shallow, shifting Blackwood River entrance that had frustrated local skippers for decades. Flinders Bay itself carries serious maritime pedigree: Matthew Flinders began his first surveys of the Australian coastline here in 1801. These days the harbour doubles as a working port for commercial fishers and an offshore abalone aquaculture venture, and as the departure point for Augusta's whale-watching fleet, with humpback and southern right whales crowding the bay from late May through August. Community events such as the annual Blessing of the Fleet and the Gourmet Escape spill onto its grassed foreshore, and on winter weekends the car park fills with four-wheel-drives and trailers from across the South West. For a town of about 1,500 people, the facility punches well above its weight as a piece of regional maritime infrastructure.

Berthing & shoreside services

The Department of Transport and Major Infrastructure manages the harbour, providing 40 floating pens ranging from 10 to 25 metres, allocated after strong early demand saw the original stage-one pen count lifted following an expressions-of-interest call; around 28 pens are hired on annual agreements with the balance kept for casual and short-term visiting vessels. Current published fees charge floating pens with walkway at $758 per metre of pen for a 12-month term, with quarterly and casual rates available through the harbour office. A 50-metre land-backed service wharf carries single and three-phase power, water, lighting and a fire hose reel, engineered for vessels up to 50 tonnes displacement and 25 metres berthing at 0.3 metres per second, with a 20-tonne point-load crane capacity and a 1,500 kg per square metre stack load. The four-lane boat ramp has floating boarding jetties and parking for about 160 cars with trailers plus roughly 50 car-only bays, though there is no wash-down facility. Public toilets serve day users while pen holders get a dedicated toilet and shower block, and 24-hour CCTV covers the harbour. Accessibility has been built in from the start: a universal access pontoon, tactile pathways, accessible parking, toilets and showers, plus bicycle racks scattered around the site. Barbecues and a broad grassed picnic area front the water, and expired flares can be surrendered at the Augusta Volunteer Marine and Rescue Group on Leeuwin Road. There is no fuel berth within the harbour, so vessels refuel by arrangement or in town, and there is no slipway; the nearest lift-out facilities are at Bunbury or Albany.

Local context in YouSail

This is directory context, not navigation advice. Check current charts, notices and official boating resources before passage.

Approaching from sea is straightforward: the twin breakwater entrance faces north into Flinders Bay and permanent navigation aids mark the leads, giving all-weather access that the Blackwood River mouth a few kilometres east never could. That river entrance, with its shallow bar and strong currents, remains the reason the harbour exists, and small craft heading for the Blackwood or Hardy Inlet still treat it with caution and local advice. Offshore, the waters around Cape Leeuwin are where the Indian and Southern Oceans meet, and conditions can deteriorate fast when a south-westerly swell runs against the tide; the St Alouarn Islands offshore are a noted fishing mark for dhufish and snapper. From June to September humpbacks and southern rights rest and calve in Flinders Bay, often within sight of the breakwater, and operators including Naturaliste Charters and Whale Watch Western Australia run twice-daily trips from the pens. Augusta township is a five-minute drive for fuel, bait, a butcher, baker and fishmonger; the Colourpatch Cafe at the river mouth and the Augusta Hotel are the standard post-trip refuelling stops for crews. The Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse, built of local limestone in 1895 and the tallest on mainland Australia, stands ten minutes south, and Hamelin Bay's resident stingrays lie a short drive north. Trailer-boat visitors favour the Flinders Bay and Turner caravan parks, both close enough to launch, fish the bay and be back before the afternoon sea breeze pipes up. Winter skippers should expect serious swell outside the breakwaters and plan coastal passages around the frequent frontal systems that hammer this corner of the continent.