While our silly season headlines have leapt on those cabanas that block our beaches, here in Noosa there’s a far more serious encroachment problem that our authorities seem reluctant to deal with.
We thought Maritime Safety Queensland was finally getting serious about the houseboat cowboys clogging up our beautiful river beaches, but now we’re not so sure.
MSQ is dragging the chain on key Noosa River Reforms developed in consultation with Noosa Council and the wider Noosa community, and there are now increasing differences between what MSQ publicly promised to deliver and what in fact is happening.
MSQ claims its Noosa River Reforms aim to keep both the Noosa River and its shoreline beaches and parklands easily and safely accessible to all.
- By restricting larger boats anchoring too close to and hogging riverside parklands and beaches
- Keeping navigation channels open and safe by restricting the number of boats anchored long term in the Noosa River
Promised MSQ regulatory reforms to achieve the above are to prohibit anchoring of larger vessels within sixty meters of the southern shoreline of the Noosa River and all of Woods Bay, and for all vessels a 28 day per year anchoring year anchoring anywhere in the Noosa River

Keeping riverside beaches and parklands accessible to all
Remember when four years ago a mob of houseboat cowboys squatted without authority on the southern bank of the Noosa River a little downstream from Doonella Bridge?
Here’s what we said in Noosa Matters in April 2022.
Maritime Safety Queensland then tweaked its on-water regulatory powers and Noosa Council used its on-shore regulatory powers, and the shore hogging cowboys were forced off the shoreline they’d claimed as their own.
It seemed at the time that MSQ was going honour its agreement with Noosa Council and the Noosa community in full.
Alas, we now know that MSQ hasn’t fixed the problem, they’ve simply let it drift downstream by turning a blind eye to houseboats squatting along Noosa Spit’s Woods Bay Beach.
The houseboat flotilla progressively crowding out Woods Bay Beach is being orchestrated by commercial business operators running them as short stay accommodation (STA) businesses using online booking platforms such as Airbnb and Stayz.

Noosa residents using their own boats are now denied safe access to Noosa Spit, Noosa Woods, Main Beach and Hasting Street, as are visiting boaties or those hiring boats from authorised boat-hire businesses along Noosaville foreshore.
How has this been allowed to happen? By MSQ failing to enforce its own no anchoring zone in Woods Bay (refer to above map).
And what about MSQ’s promise to restrict anchoring of all vessels to 28 days per year anywhere in the Noosa River, unless one of the fleet of an existing and approved houseboat hire business?
The promised 28 day anchoring limit is scheduled to come into force in March 2025.
At the last minute MSQ is now considering opening-up a new anchoring area in at the southern part of Lake Cooroibah, and/or in the river itself between Lake Cooroibah and the Moorindil Street ferry. Clearly this is in contradiction to its own map above.
Disturbingly, MSQ is considering this without consultation with Noosa Council or the wider Noosa community.
If MSQ continues down this path, it will simply shift further upstream the free-for-all anchoring debacle it has allowed to evolve over the past 40 years between Tewantin and the River Mouth.
Why is MSQ dragging the chain on its Noosa River Reform commitments?
It seems some MSQ bureaucrats have become sympathetic to the commercial aspirations of the houseboat operators hogging Woods Bay Beach, allowing themselves to become distracted from delivering promised MSQ Noosa River anchoring reforms, particularly in Woods Bay.
And MSQ’s top brass may be becoming distracted from seeing through its promised Noosa River Reforms as it fights to defend its bureaucratic empire against that of the new Sunshine Coast Waterways Authority (SCWA) currently being set up by the LNP state government.
In a future edition of Noosa Matters, the pros and cons of Noosa Council and the Noosa community supporting or rejecting the Noosa River falling under the control of a new Sunshine Coat Waterway Authority will be examined.
What must be done immediately to ensure MSQ’s Noosa River Reform is back on track and powering ahead?
Noosa Council and the wider Noosa community must now respectfully request the incoming government to ensure MSQ management gets on with the job of implementing promised Noosa River Reform as previously agreed with Noosa Council and the wider Noosa community.
We must fix this problem, once and for all, and ensure MSQ delivers what it has promised for our most vital waterway.
This Post Has One Comment
Well said Michael but the big concentration currently is the promotion of Tourism. Hopefully MSQ will commit to its promises but the right people need to force actions.