In a busy life, it’s important to plan times of retreat; weekends of relaxation, sharing time with your partner surrounded by green. Somehow, we find that lawns, gardens and wilderness are nourishing for the soul, far more so than concrete and bitumen! The InterContinental Sanctuary Cove is one of our favourite retreats, an expansive resort...

Sometimes dreams take us to unexpected places. At least, so it seems for Thai Mudgee’s owner Siranee Hocheuay, known to her guests as ‘Boo’. After moving to Sydney from Central Thailand, Boo fell in love with the Gold Coast when visiting friends. “It was just like my home town,” Boo tells us. “In King Street,...

It doesn’t seem that long ago that Evergreen was all the rage for a family breakfast or brunch for ‘ladies who lunch’. A verdant wild jungle in the middle of busy suburbia, replete with overflowing water fountains and voluminous plants, owner/chef Robert Powell and his wife Lynne employed a bevy of young wait staff to...

For many Queenslanders, Twin Towns has been a favourite playground. Founded in 1957 by the RSL as a services club almost straddling the twin towns of Coolangatta and Tweed Heads (hence the name), Twin Towns was a favourite place to have a tipple because of its location in NSW, especially during the years when gambling...

For years blokes have been missing out on one of the ‘sweet’ spots of life: High Tea. High tea is for the girls, I figure. Somehow it feels like a very cultured thing to do, dressed up in high heels and short skirts to celebrate a hen’s afternoon or baby shower. A shame, really, if...

Cute as a button, Le Vintage Boutique Cafe transforms a rather ordinary corner store into a chic little boutique hybrid business. Whether you want to pick up staple food items such as bread and milk, coffee or the morning’s paper, or stop for a meal with friends, if you live on the western side of...

No dining experience on the Gold Coast would be complete without a visit to Palazzo Versace, recently crowned Australasia’s Leading Hotel 2015 in the World Travel Awards! Opened in 2000 as the first Versace hotel in the world, the hotel was a coup for developer Sunland who, after a lengthy period of negotiation, signed a...

Tucked in between the Gold Coast and Byron Bay, the Tweed Coast is a foodie destination all its own. The Tweed Fusion Festival, held annually in October, invites us away from our all-too-comfortable armchairs to explore and experience the environs just beyond our back door. Tweed Fusion is a two-day celebration of arts, music, food...

I walked into the Woodbox Café at West Burleigh and felt right at home. There’s that spacious ‘earth mother’ vibe going on which is rare on the Gold Coast: that of a large open country kitchen, where the bread is freshly baked, the heady aroma of coffee wafts through the room, produce picked in the...