Onslow Maritime Facility

About the marina

Onslow Maritime Facility is the boating hub of a small Pilbara town that lives two lives at once: a quiet coastal community of a few hundred people, and a service base for the offshore oil and gas industry that has transformed the Ashburton North industrial precinct next door. The facility sits on Beadon Creek, about 550 metres inside the creek entrance, and is managed by the Department of Transport and Major Infrastructure. Its modest recreational footprint, ten berths on mooring piles known locally as The Sticks, a 50-metre service wharf and a dual-lane boat ramp, belies its strategic importance. The resources sector, charter operators and the local fishing fleet all depend on the same strip of waterfront, and the Onslow Marine Support Base operates its deep-water logistics facility further up the creek. The town itself has form when it comes to moving with the times: the original Onslow townsite at the mouth of the Ashburton River was abandoned in 1925 as the river silted, and the community rebuilt at Beadon Creek, a heritage of pragmatism that continues in the current boating precinct works. In August 2023 the State Government and Shire of Ashburton completed the 14 million dollar Stage 1 of the Onslow Community Boating Precinct at the facility, dredging a new basin and building a modern two-lane ramp with floating jetty, sealed parking and solar lighting. Stage 2, designed in detail but not yet funded, would add fully serviced boat pens for recreational and charter vessels, public jetties and landside development lots, finally giving Onslow something closer to a true marina. Until then the facility remains what it has long been: a functional government wharf-and-ramp operation serving one of the most boat-owning communities in the State.

Berthing & shoreside services

The berthing core of the facility is ten berths on mooring piles in Beadon Creek, referred to as The Sticks, allocated on permanent arrangements largely to commercial, charter and fishing operators; transient recreational berthing is limited and should be arranged with the department in advance. The 50-metre service wharf provides single-phase and three-phase power and water, and its fuelling facility is operated by Baileys Marine Fuels on a fuel-card basis (phone 1300 224 539), dispensing diesel to vessels at the wharf. Published load limits for the wharf allow berthing of vessels up to 50 tonnes displacement at a maximum approach speed of 0.3 metres per second, with stack loads of 750 kilograms per square metre and M9 vehicle loading, which comfortably covers the charter boats and small workboats that use it. The Community Boating Precinct has modernised the launching side: a dual-lane concrete ramp with an all-tide floating jetty offering more than 40 metres of berthing space on both sides, a sealed car and boat-trailer park with solar lighting, a fish cleaning table near the ramp, and public amenities added in the final Stage 1 works in 2023. The Stage 1 project dredged about 45,000 cubic metres from the creek bed to form a deeper basin protected by rock revetments incorporating some 20,000 tonnes of granite and recovered rock. There is no slipway, travel lift or hardstand at the facility; heavy marine support, including craneage up to 800 tonnes, laydown areas and fuel bunkering, is available commercially at the adjacent Onslow Marine Support Base for vessels up to 110 metres. Detailed design for Stage 2, fully serviced pens, more public jetties and ablutions, has been completed by engineering firm Advisian, but construction awaits funding. Cyclone mooring arrangements and dredged-depth notices are published by the department and should be checked before arrival.

Local context in YouSail

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

Beadon Creek is a tidal creek on a coast where tides run to several metres, and the entrance channel requires regular dredging; the department publishes cyclone community information sheets with current dredged depths, and strangers should take them seriously rather than trusting charted soundings. The approach from seaward is across open Indian Ocean water with offshore shoals, and the creek entrance can break in swell, so arrivals are best timed for the top of the tide in settled weather. Inside, the creek is sheltered in all conditions short of a cyclone, and Onslow's reputation as a cyclone town means mooring discipline is taken seriously; the pilings at The Sticks and the cyclone-rated revetments exist for a reason. Fishing is the reason most private boats come here: the Mackerel Islands lie within trailer-boat range offshore, the creek mouths and flats hold threadfin salmon, mud crabs and barramundi-scale mangrove jack, and the ramp car park on a winter weekend testifies to a recreational boat ownership rate the Shire quotes at 70 vessels per 1,000 people. Provisioning in town covers the essentials, a supermarket, fuel, a tavern and accommodation geared partly to the fly-in workforce, but specialist marine supplies are thin; anything beyond filters and fasteners means a trip to Karratha, about 250 kilometres northeast, or freight in. Fuel for boats is by Baileys card at the service wharf, so arrange the card before arriving. The surrounding coast is remote in the Pilbara sense: long distances, corrugations on station tracks, and no other serviced boating facility until Exmouth or Karratha. For visitors towing a boat 1,300 kilometres up from Perth, the practical advice is simple: arrive self-sufficient, time the tides, and expect to share the ramp with cray boats and gas-field crew boats.