Built across the Boyne River south west of Gladstone, the Awoonga Dam is a rockfill structure with a concrete upstream face slab. The embankment is over 650 metres in length and 54.4 metres in height, with a volume of approximately 2 million cubic metres of rock.

Since 1996 over two million barramundi fingerlings and 340,000 mullet fingerlings have been released into Lake Awoonga. Barramundi in the 10-25kg range are regularly caught from the lake. the largest barramundi caught to date was 29.8kg.