Halcyon House

When sisters Elisha and Siobhan Bickle came across the Hideaway Motel at Cabarita Beach – a ’60s surf motel well beyond its prime – they immediately saw its potential. So they acquired the Hideaway and set about transforming it.

After two years of planning and a 15-month build, Halcyon House opened in 2015. It was an instant classic. The entire hotel is ’60s themed, expressed differently across each of the 21 rooms, from the patterned walls, cushions, bedding and lamps, to the blue-and-white handmade tiles and lime-washed timber flooring.

Nab a striped day bed by the turquoise pool, where waiters decked in blue and white take your cocktail order. Take one of the vintage bikes for a ride around town, then return for dinner at in-house restaurant Paper Daisy, helmed by chef Jason Barratt, formerly of Raes at Wategos, Attica and Stokehouse. His menus are a simple, confident produce-forward vision of Australian coastal cooking.

The final big draw of Halcyon House is Cabarita Beach itself. It’s quiet and idyllic, but thanks to its location halfway between the Gold Coast and Byron Bay, it’s close to the action, too.