Dog friendly beaches in Jervis Bay

Jervis Bay is an easy place to bring a dog and a surprisingly easy place to get it wrong. The famous half of the bay, the half with Green Patch and Murrays Beach and the White Sands Walk on it, is national park, and dogs are not allowed in any of it. The other half is council beach, and most of that is open to dogs.

The line between the two is not signposted from the road, and it does not follow the boundary a visitor would guess.

So this is the short version. Four beaches around Jervis Bay allow dogs off the lead. They all run on the same hours. Everywhere else on council land, the dog is on a lead. In the two national parks, the dog stays home.

One rule covers the whole Shoalhaven

Shoalhaven City Council puts it in a single sentence on the front of its own guide:

Dogs in the Shoalhaven are required to be “on-leash” at all times EXCEPT when in an “off-leash area”.

That is the whole framework. There is no general right to let a dog off the lead on a beach here. Off-leash is a specific permission attached to specific stretches of sand, and the council says the areas are regularly patrolled and that on the spot penalties apply.

Two other council-wide bans are worth knowing before you park. Dogs are prohibited within 10 metres of children’s playing apparatus, and within 10 metres of food preparation or consumption areas in public places. That second one is why the dog cannot sit under the table at the busier end of a foreshore reserve, even on a lead.

The hours, which are the part people get wrong

Every off-leash beach on Jervis Bay uses the same two windows, and they change with the season rather than with the school holidays:

• 1 October to 30 April: off-leash from 4pm to 8am
• 1 May to 30 September: off-leash from 3pm to 10am

Read that carefully, because the hours run through the night, not through the day. The beach is off-leash from mid afternoon until mid morning. The middle of the day, which is when most visitors turn up with a dog in the back of the car, is the part that is not off-leash.

We are in the winter window at the moment, so it is 3pm to 10am until the end of September.

The practical version: a dog walk here is a sunrise or a sunset activity. That is no hardship in Jervis Bay, where the light on the water at either end of the day is the reason half the photographs of this coast exist.

Where the dog can be off the lead

Huskisson Beach

The main town beach, and the most convenient of the four if you are staying in Huskisson, because you can walk to it. Off-leash on the restricted hours above.

The council map marks three prohibited pockets along this stretch, and they are not obvious on the ground: the creek mouth and the wharf at the northern end, the section in front of the sea pool and Shark Net Beach, and the southern end down towards Tapalla Avenue. The off-leash sand is the middle.

Nelsons Beach, Vincentia

On the Vincentia side, just south of Plantation Point, down a timber stairway through the dune. Off-leash on the same hours.

It is the only off-leash beach at Vincentia, and its neighbours are not close calls. Collingwood Beach round to the north is a prohibited area. Blenheim Beach, the next cove south, is prohibited as well. Nelsons is the sand in between.

Callala Beach

The long one on the northern shore, looking back across the bay at Beecroft Peninsula. Off-leash on the same hours, and by a distance the emptiest of the four.

Two stretches are prohibited: between Parkes Crescent and Centre Street, and the southern end of the beach south of the Beach Road car park at Myola.

Currarong Beach

Currarong is not on Jervis Bay itself, and it is worth being straight about that. It sits at the top of the Beecroft Peninsula, the long arm of land that forms the bay’s northern head, and its beach faces north into Crookhaven Bight rather than into the bay. The council’s own maps label the water that way.

It is in this guide because it is the fourth off-leash beach within reach of a Jervis Bay weekend, and because it is the emptiest of them by a distance. The off-leash area runs from the creek to Peel Street, on the same hours again.

Getting there from the Huskisson side takes longer than the map suggests, because you go back out towards the highway and in again rather than along the coast.

Where the dog goes back on the lead

Everywhere else on council land, which is more of the bay than the list above might imply.

Collingwood Beach at Vincentia is the one to read twice. The beach itself is a prohibited area, but the cycleway that runs behind it is an on-leash area, and that cycleway is genuinely one of the better dog walks in Jervis Bay. Long, flat, sealed, shaded, with the bay through the trees. Note that the land west of the cycleway is prohibited as well, so stay on the path.

Hyams Beach is not on the council’s off-leash list, and the council’s own guidance is that where a town is not listed, you can take the dog onto the beach but it needs to be on a lead. Which is fine, and it means the whitest sand in the bay is not off limits to a dog on a lead.

Blenheim Beach, the little cove south of Nelsons, is marked prohibited. So is Palm Beach at Sanctuary Point, from there through to the John Williams reserves.

The two parks that catch people out

This is the part worth knowing before you drive three hours.

Booderee National Park does not allow pets at all. Booderee’s own advice is blunt about it: pets are not permitted in the park. That rules out Green Patch, Murrays Beach, Cave Beach, Hole in the Wall, the botanic gardens and the campgrounds, in one go. If someone has recommended a Jervis Bay beach to you and it sounds spectacular, there is a fair chance it is in Booderee and the dog cannot come.

Jervis Bay National Park, which is the NSW park on the western shore, is the same answer from a different agency. NSW National Parks states that pets and domestic animals other than certified assistance animals are not permitted, and it applies that to the individual sites as well. Greenfield Beach picnic area, Hare Point and the White Sands Walk all sit inside it.

That last one is the trap. You can walk the dog on Hyams Beach on a lead. You cannot take it onto the White Sands Walk that starts from the end of it, because the walking track is in the national park. Same beach, different rules, no fence between them.

August to April, watch for the birds

Between August and April, threatened shorebirds nest on the Shoalhaven shoreline, in the sand, above the tide line. Dogs are prohibited in shorebird nesting areas year round, and temporary signs go up wherever a nest appears.

The council’s guidance on this is not really about dogs that chase. Nesting birds read any unleashed dog as a threat and will leave the eggs or hide the chicks for long periods because of it, which is often what kills the clutch rather than the dog itself.

Nesting season started this month. If you see fenced-off sand or a new sign at a beach that did not have one last time, that is what it is.

If you want somewhere off the lead in the middle of the day

There are two options near the bay, and neither is on Jervis Bay itself.

Clifton Park at Sanctuary Point is a fenced off-leash exercise area with no time restriction at all. It is a park rather than a beach, but it is fenced, which is the thing you actually want with a dog that does not recall reliably.

Shoalhaven Heads, north of the bay, has 24 hour off-leash areas: the Seven Mile Beach sand from 200 metres north of the surf clubhouse up to the access track, plus River Road Reserve on the river side and Jerry Bailey Oval. If your trip is built around the dog rather than around Jervis Bay, Shoalhaven Heads is the better base. Seven Mile Beach is enormous and you are not watching the clock.

Before you go

The times and the boundaries in this guide come from Shoalhaven City Council’s own Dog Off-Leash Guide, which carries the note “Information accurate 13.07.2026”, and from the council’s off-leash and prohibited areas page. Council can change an area or a time without much fanfare, and the guide says so itself, so check the council’s off-leash and prohibited areas page before you rely on a set of hours.

The park rules are from Booderee National Park and NSW National Parks. Those two are not going to change.

Photographs: Jervis Bay from Callala Beach by Dj11433134, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.