Marina service
Laguna Quays Marina
About
Laguna Quays Marina at a glance
Laguna Quays Marina appears to operate marina facilities at Laguna Quays in Midge Point, Queensland (Mackay / Whitsunday region). The listing identifies the business as a marina but provides no website or detailed service list in the supplied records.
Service area: Midge Point, QLD
- Marina type
- resort marina
- Region
- Mackay / Whitsunday
- Water body
- Repulse Bay
- Berth types
- casual berthing, permanent berthing
Facilities and services
- former boat ramp (closed indefinitely)
- former resort amenities (defunct)
- dredged marina basin (silted, cyclone-damaged)
About Laguna Quays Marina
Laguna Quays Marina is a cautionary tale in Queensland marina development rather than a working facility. It sits on the western shore of Repulse Bay at Midge Point, roughly 60km south of Airlie Beach and 40km north of Mackay, where a dredged basin and wharf once served the Laguna Quays resort. The resort was a product of the late-1980s Japanese investment wave: its developer, Aqua Del Rey, built a 60-suite lodge, beach club, bar and restaurant, an 18-hole golf course and the marina on a low, mangrove-fringed coastal plain, only to collapse into bankruptcy in 1995 with debts reported at around $200 million owed to Japanese and Australian banks. What followed was nearly two decades of limbo. Parts of the resort were auctioned to recover arrears, and by 2009 some $2 million in rates was reportedly owed to Mackay Regional Council. Hong Kong-based Fullshare Holdings bought the property in 2013, mowed the fairways, refurbished some buildings and even dredged the marina basin while talking up five-star hotels and a second marina, but the revival never materialised. Cyclone Debbie in March 2017 drove a storm surge 1.75m above the marina wharf, wrecking what infrastructure remained, and the access road to the marina and boat ramp has been closed to the public ever since. Today the basins and buildings sit behind fencing and no-entry signs, a quiet residential pocket of around 90 people living in their shadow. The contrast is striking: over the ridge, the Whitsunday charter fleet puts to sea every morning, while here the tide moves in and out of a basin that no boat has called home for years.
Marina facilities
There are no operating marine services at Laguna Quays, and any directory listing that suggests otherwise is stale. The marina's berthing, wharfage and resort-backed amenities effectively ended with the resort's 1995 collapse, and the listed phone number, (07) 4947 7844, has not been verifiable for years. Fullshare's 2013 purchase brought a short burst of activity, including dredging of the marina basin and cosmetic work on the entrance road and buildings, but no berthing operation, fuel facility, pump-out, power or water reticulation to berths was ever reinstated. The decisive blow came on 28 March 2017, when Cyclone Debbie's storm surge overtopped the wharf by a reported 1.75 metres, destroying the marina structures and the adjacent public boat ramp. The access road to the ramp and marina has remained closed to the public since, reported locally as closed indefinitely, leaving anglers who once launched here without a facility. In practical terms, visiting skippers should treat Laguna Quays as a historic site only. The nearest usable public launching on this stretch of coast is at Victor Creek near Bloomsbury and at Seaforth to the south, while full marina services are available at Mackay Marina, roughly 70km to the south-east, and in the Whitsunday marinas around Airlie Beach and Cannonvale to the north. Anyone researching berthing in the Repulse Bay area should contact Mackay Regional Council or Maritime Safety Queensland for current status before planning a visit, as the land remains private property and trespassing on the resort site is actively policed with signage and cameras. Berth holders who once kept boats in the basin have long since moved on to Mackay or the Whitsundays.
Local sailing knowledge
Repulse Bay is a broad, shallow, mangrove-edged bay with the big tidal range typical of this part of the Queensland coast, and its creeks and flats have long been valued by locals for crabbing, prawning and inshore fishing rather than deep-water boating. Midge Point itself is a quiet beachside settlement; Cyclone Debbie pushed around two metres of water through three of its streets in March 2017 and left the community isolated without power, phones or road access for four days, a reminder that this coast copes with cyclones as a fact of life. The ruined resort next door has become an odd sort of landmark. Its empty golf course and fenced-off buildings can be seen from the public road, but the site is private, signposted and monitored, and entering the buildings is neither permitted nor safe. A small counterpoint to the dereliction is the Laguna Quays Respite cottage, opened in 2011 on the resort's boundary to give missionary families free time-out accommodation, and the Midge Point Art Prize, sponsored by local identities and co-hosted at the Point Tavern. For boaties working this coast, Bloomsbury and Victor Creek provide the practical launching points, and the Whitsunday group lies a comfortable day run to the north in settled south-easterlies. In short, Laguna Quays today is a place to read about rather than berth at: a grand 1990s vision undone by debt, distance and one very large storm. Anyone anchored in the bay should expect shallow water well offshore, a strong tidal stream in the creeks, and very little in the way of shore facilities once the ramp closures are taken into account.