5 months ago
“Great little cafe by the marina, heaps of parking.”
About
William Gunn Jetty & TMR Marina at a glance
Marina and jetty located in Manly (Brisbane Bayside), Queensland. Provides marina facilities and berth/mooring access for recreational vessels.
Service area: Manly, Brisbane Bayside, QLD
- Marina type
- government/transport wharf-marina
- Operator
- Department of Transport and Main Roads (Qld)
- Region
- Brisbane Bayside
- Water body
- Moreton Bay
- Berth types
- casual berthing
Facilities and services
- fuel
- pump-out
- power & water
- wifi
- showers & laundry
- restaurant/cafe
- ice
- waste oil disposal
- used-oil disposal
- defibrillator
- recycling
- visitor information centre on site
- tour boat departures
- picnic areas
- coach parking
- discovery centre exhibits
Useful for sailors looking for
- Dry storage or hardstand
- Fuel stops
About William Gunn Jetty & TMR Marina
William Gunn Jetty is the public face of Manly's waterfront, a Queensland Government jetty and small Transport and Main Roads-managed marina at 1 Wyvernleigh Close, Manly West, on the open Moreton Bay foreshore just outside Manly Boat Harbour. The jetty carries the name of William Morrison Gunn, the long-serving state member for Wynnum from 1944 to 1966, a Manly identity who also founded the Manly-Lota RSL sub-branch. Where the neighbouring club marinas are private worlds behind gatecards, this facility is deliberately open: the Wynnum Manly Visitor Information Centre stands at the jetty, its ambassadors booking island tours and dispensing local advice, and the over-water Tide on the Jetty restaurant serves breakfast through dinner with the bay sliding past underneath. The floating marina itself is modest, a run of floating pontoon berths suited to boats under 20 metres on casual terms, but its service list is surprisingly complete for a government wharf, and it functions as a genuine port of convenience for bay boats. The jetty is also a working departure point: the Cat o' Nine Tails catamaran has run tours from here to the colonial prison ruins on St Helena Island since 1982, and community events such as the Moreton Bay Day Sail use the jetty as their base. Visiting tall ships and replica vessels, including the Portuguese caravel Notorious, have moored alongside for public open days. The result is a rare thing on the Queensland coast, a government-run recreational jetty that operates simultaneously as marina, tourist hub, restaurant venue and town square, with the Manly Harbour Village strip an easy walk along the esplanade.
Marina facilities
As a government facility rather than a commercial marina, the published detail is thinner than a private operator's, but directory and port listings give a clear picture. The floating marina offers casual berthing in two size bands, under 10 metres and 10 to 20 metres, in side-to configuration, with water and electricity available at the berths. Fuel is sold at the jetty, and the waste services are unusually comprehensive for a public wharf: sludge and wastewater pump-outs and used-oil disposal are both listed, alongside recycling facilities. Ice, phone and wifi are available, and the site carries a defibrillator. There are no permanent berths, no travel lift, no hardstand and no dry storage on site; this is a berth-and-go facility, and vessels needing boatyard work are directed a few hundred metres into Manly Boat Harbour, where the Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron, MBTBC and East Coast Marina between them operate travel lifts, slipways and full trade support. Ashore, the amenity load is carried by the visitor infrastructure: public toilets, showers and laundry at the Visitor Information Centre beside the jetty, picnic areas and coach parking in the adjoining waterfront parklands, and the Moreton Bay Discovery Centre's environmental exhibits for crews with kids aboard. Dining is a genuine drawcard rather than a courtesy cafe: Tide on the Jetty sits over the water on the jetty structure itself. Berthing arrangements and fees are administered through TMR's recreational boating channels rather than a marina office with regular hours, so visiting boats should confirm availability before arrival, particularly on weekends when the jetty's public functions, tour departures and events can dominate the wharf.
Local sailing knowledge
The jetty stands on the open foreshore west of Manly Boat Harbour's breakwaters, so the approach is across Waterloo Bay rather than through the harbour leads. The bay here is shallow and the bottom shelves gently; deeper-keeled yachts keep to the marked channels and favour the top half of the tide, while trailer boats and shoal-draft cruisers come and go freely. The reward for the shallow approach is position: this is the closest point on the coast to St Helena Island, whose prison ruins lie about four nautical miles out, and the Cat o' Nine Tails tour boats make the protected crossing in half an hour. Ashore, the Manly foreshore has genuine heritage texture. The heritage-listed Wynnum Wading Pool, a tidal pool built as a Depression-era relief project in 1932, sits up the esplanade, the jetty precinct hosts markets and sailing events through the year, and the Visitor Information Centre can kit out crews with island tour bookings, maps and local history. Manly Harbour Village, five minutes on foot, covers provisioning with a bakery, butcher, chemist, minimart and the Muirs chandlery, and the train from Manly station reaches Brisbane in about 45 minutes. The jetty's restaurant over the water is the obvious crew dinner, though locals will point you up the road to the Cambridge Parade cafes for breakfast. Fishing from the jetty itself is a bayside ritual, and the surrounding parklands, coach parking and picnic lawns mean the place doubles as a family destination on weekends. The jetty works best as a short-stay base for exploring the bay rather than a lay-up address, and in northerlies the open foreshore has more motion than the harbour marinas behind the wall.
Customer perspective
Recent Google reviews
★ 4.5 · 69 Google reviews
7 months ago
“Best place to meet the local prawn trawler”
8 months ago
“Nice relaxing place beautiful water”
a year ago
“Nice enough area for a day out if not just a little overcrowded. There was a time you could catch bream or Johnny Dory's from this jetty but now it's a wasted effort.”
Reviews are customer opinions sourced from Google, not YouSail endorsements or verified sailing evidence.
Report incorrect information or suggest an update
Keep exploring
Nearby marinas and marine services
Marina service
Wynnum Manly Yacht Club MarinaManly, QLD≈ 419 m away
4.7 · 44 Google reviews
View profile