Dog-friendly beaches in Queensland and New South Wales

The best dog beaches announce themselves from the carpark: a dozen tails at the waterline, a tennis ball in the shallows, and sand enough for all of them. Finding one is the hard part, because the rules shift with every council boundary, off-leash here, on-leash there, mornings only somewhere else.

This page lists every beach we track with a dog-friendly record. The 8 Queensland beaches are verified against their council registers, read in July 2026, with each zone’s hours and boundaries noted plainly. The 25 New South Wales beaches are mapped as dog-friendly by the OpenStreetMap community. Councils rewrite dog rules often, the Sunshine Coast did in July 2026, so read the signs when you arrive.

For the story version, our weekend guide Where the dog is welcome on the South East Queensland coast walks the eight verified beaches in one read.