Where the dog is welcome on the South East Queensland coast

A kelpie at full stretch along a hard-packed tideline, ears back, owner twenty metres behind and not trying to catch up. It is the thing a beach dog wants and the thing most Queensland beaches will unfortunately not give it. Signage along this coast defaults to on-leash, and understandably, but a working set of exceptions exists, council by council, and most of them never make it past a laminated sign at the car park. The team at AllBeaches went through the actual registers so you do not have to guess at a beach and get it wrong.

Eight beaches across three council areas carry a council designation we could verify, seven of them off-leash and one leash-only, each with the hours or the zone that make it real. The full list, with every beach's limits stated the way the council states them, sits on our dog-friendly beaches directory. Here is the coast version, region by region.

Brisbane and Moreton Bay

At Queens Beach, on the Redcliffe Peninsula, the off-leash zone runs from the stairs near the Griffith Road intersection northward, with no time limit attached. It is one of the few entries on this list you can rely on any hour of the day. The southern half of the same beach is on-leash, so the line matters more than the name.

A short drive around the peninsula, Clontarf Beach is the honest exception on this list: it is a leash-only beach, the stretch between the Ted Smout Memorial Bridge and the Woody Point Jetty. Worth naming anyway, because a beach where dogs are welcome on a lead, with flat water and a jetty to walk to, is still a useful Sunday for a dog that does not need to run.

The Gold Coast

Three off-leash zones sit on the council's own register here, each with its own boundary and none of them casual about it. The Spit gives the most room: off-leash for about a kilometre and a half, from the access opposite Muriel Henchman Park north to the seaway rock groyne, with the high-rise skyline of Surfers Paradise receding behind you the further you walk.

At Tallebudgera Beach, the off-leash stretch runs between the creek entrance and lifeguard tower 16, the same corner where the creek mouth keeps a sheltered, generally calmer alternative to the open beach if the dog would rather wade than swim.

Palm Beach Parklands is the one to read carefully. The off-leash zone sits around the parklands on the northern side of the Currumbin Creek entrance, looping down to the ocean beach near lifeguard tower 13. The main Palm Beach strip itself, the long stretch most visitors picture, is not off-leash. Park at the parklands end, not further up the beach.

The Sunshine Coast

New rules took effect here on 3 July, and they reward reading the fine print. Coolum Beach is off-leash for roughly three kilometres either side of Stumers Creek, though the last ten metres nearest the car park stays on a lead, a buffer that keeps the transition from car to sand civilised for everyone.

Moffat Beach and its neighbour Shelly Beach are the two to plan an evening around rather than a morning. Moffat is off-leash from 4pm to 8am, between Beach Access 296 and a point 100 metres east of Access 275. Shelly runs the same hours immediately south of the Moffat rock shelf, but only from May to October, a seasonal window built around the migratory shorebirds that use the beach the rest of the year. Turn up in January expecting the same rules and you will be on a lead.

What this list is not

It is not every beach in South East Queensland where a dog happens to end up. It is the set we could verify against a council register or an official destination-marketing page, as of 24 July 2026, with a source and a date behind every entry. Signage changes, councils update rules, and a beach not on this list may simply be one we have not verified yet rather than one that is definitely off-limits. Check the sign at the access point regardless of what a website tells you, this one included.

None of the above is a claim about patrols, water safety or facilities beyond the leash rule itself. Read the flags, mind the rip, and treat a hot afternoon car park the way you would with a child in the back seat, which is to say: not at all.

For the beaches further north and south of this cluster, and for New South Wales' own dog-friendly stretches, the full directory keeps growing at the dog-friendly beaches page. If the trip is bigger than one beach, the planner will string a few of these together in the right order.