Cove luxury in the palm of your hands

It’s standing room only around the long poolside table where Emma is teaching guests how to make cocktails. The couple next to me are from just south of Amsterdam. They are staying at Reef House for five nights to explore the Great Barrier Reef and the surrounding hinterland. Two Italian mums with their 18-year-old daughters switch between English and Italian, depending on how excited they get. Then there are the Americans, covered in a thick layer of zinc cream to protect themselves from the relentless north Queensland sun. Everyone is dressed in bikinis and board shorts. It is the appropriate dress code.

These free cocktail-making classes run most afternoons. I ask Emma, a Cairns girl, what Reef House would be if it was a cocktail. “It would have to have coconut, rum and cream,” she says.

Centre of attention

She’s right. Reef House sits in the middle of the esplanade that fronts Palm Cove Beach.

A striking vintage, open-flow white building with a tin roof, it’s surrounded by typical tropical foliage that is always lush, green and thick with new growth. When you walk into the rooms, the smell of coconut from the oil burner lets you know straight away that you are on holidays.

Emma’s job today is to teach us how to make a Caipiroska and an Aperol Sour. Aperol comes from near the Italians’ home town and they giggle loudly as they combine it with lemon juice, sugar syrup and egg whites before getting all Tom Cruise-like and shaking the glass ferociously.

After the 45-minute class, everyone retires to a poolside lounge for the afternoon. As I look down from my third-floor room, I see people reading newspapers, books, some sleeping, some scrolling through iPads and phones, as the calm of Palm Cove takes hold.

Palm Cove is a 35-minute drive from Cairns Airport. Further north, Port Douglas is another 40 minutes away. It is a simple old-fashioned holiday spot. Pretty much everything happens on one street. There are high-end hotels, apartments and still the odd little holiday shack fighting against progress. It’s more laid-back than Port Douglas. It’s easy to explore, especially if you grab a bike from the Reef House and hit the road.

Bathed in history

Reef House has an interesting history. It was built in 1958 as a family home for a Cairns bookmaker. At the time, the local paper reported that a pool builder paid off his gambling debts by building the bookmaker “the best swimming pool in north Queensland”.

In 1970, a group of businessmen bought the house, opened a restaurant and three suites in the garden for people to stay in. Two years later Brigadier David Thompson bought Reef House as his private residence but he always let rooms to visitors. He ran the place like an officer’s mess. He introduced an honesty system for guests to keep track of their drinks consumption and pay on departure. That still exists today at the Brigadier’s Bar which is open each evening at twilight.

The hotel has three pools and 67 rooms that either look over the pools or towards the ocean. My room has a bathroom, a dressing room, a combined lounge and bedroom and a balcony big enough to have a fridge, sink, dining table for two, and two timber lounge chairs. The walls are white, the floors terracotta, and the furnishings are timber. It has a beach feel about it. Yes, the shower, sinks and toilets need updating, but the room is extremely comfortable, welcoming, and not at all pretentious.

It’s time to head to the spa!

Spa manager Isabelle Neil has been at Reef House for more than four years. She has a quietly spoken Swiss accent and warmly holds your hand as she welcomes you into her world.

The spa menu reflects Reef House’s location with many of the treatments referencing the ocean and many of the products used originating from the sea. A Sea Breeze Facial will cost you $145, a one-hour holistic massage costs $145. From the upstairs spa room you can hear water cascading as you gently drift off to another world as Isabelle performs her magic.

You can get $60 massages down the road. I counted five other spas on my walks, but the luxury and personal care at The Reef House Spa make a massage an experience.

The restaurant serves breakfast, lunch and dinner and, as you would expect with a beachfront eatery, the menu has lots of seafood options, including a hot or cold seafood taster which, at $39.90, is good value.

Victorian-born chef Ben Canham – who learned to cook in Italian, Asian and French restaurants – has been in charge for the past year and describes his food as modern Australian fusion. “We make the most of the best Queensland and Australian produce we can find,” he says.

The chef gets smoked duck chorizo made to his recipe by a local butcher. I tried it from the room service menu in an orecchiette pasta dish with broccolini, green peas, garlic butter and Grana Padano. Delivered in 10 minutes, it was, hand-on-heart, the best room service meal I’ve ever had.

THE REEF HOUSE PALM COVE

Ph: (07) 4080 2600 or email reservations@reefhouse.com.au