The Awoonga Dam is built beautifully across the Boyne River which is positioned in the southwestern region of Gladstone. The rock-fill construction consists of a concrete slab while the edge of the dam was said to have been built from a rock that was dug up from a quarry. The bank of the dam is a massive expanse which is more than 650 meters long and over 54 meters tall. The volume of the embankment could be well over two million cubic meters of rock according to records. The construction of the dam and its original design permits room for further building.
The Gladstone water board and the port authority of the city have started a program for breeding the species of mullet and the mangrove jack for various stocking requirements. It is recorded that around 300,000 fish are let into the Lake Awoonga on an annual basis and that the fish are then bred at a hatchery of sorts. This hatchery is said to be the biggest breeding program in the area. The board maintains a “fishery monitoring program” that uses various surveys to keep track of the restocking progress in the lake. Most visitors travel to the dam and Lake Awoonga to catch a glimpse of the beautiful water body while admiring the fish that thrive there in abundance. There are many apartments at Oaks Grand Gladstone such as Oaks Grand Gladstone that cater to the lodging requirements of many visitors to the area.
It has been estimated that since the year of 1996 more than 2 million barramundi and 340,000 mullets have been let into the Lake Awoonga and that about 10 to 25 kilograms are fished from the lake at regular intervals. There are many species of fish in the lake such as the eastern rainbow fish, bony bream, sea mullet, mangrove jack, silver perch, Saratoga, sleepy cod and sooty grunter.
