Tin Can Bay, Queensland. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Tin Can Bay is a town in the Wide Bay–Burnett region in Queensland, Australia. The seaside town is located on a deep but narrow sheltered inlet in the Gympie local government area, 218 kilometres (135 mi) north of the state capital, Brisbane.At the 2006 census, Tin Can Bay had a population of 1,994.It is suggested that the town's name derives from the indigenous word, Tuncanbar, thought to refer to the dugongs that frequent the inlet. European settlement began in the 1870s as the point where logs would be floated to the timber mills at Maryborough.ach September the town hosts the Tin Can Bay Seafood Festival [1] , a day of family fun, with entertainment, novelty competitions such as mullet throwing and prawn eating, helicopter joy flights over the bay, seafood and market stalls.