Pamper youself in Cairns and Port Douglas

IN Cairns and Port Douglas, scrubs, rubs, wraps and rolls are more popular than sunbaking and a swim in the sea, writes Susan Kurosawa.

Cairns International Hotel spa/supplied

TO spa or not to spa: that's hardly a real dilemma when it comes to a northern Queensland resort holiday.

A rub, scrub, wrap or roll is as much part of the getaway menu these days as a sit on the beach (lathered in sunblock and under straw hats so wide they make sombreros look like side plates) and a swim in the sea.

Gateway to the Great Barrier Reef

At Mirvac's Cairns International Hotel, a spacious city property with a refurb planned, a super $2.5 million spa has opened on level two with 10 treatment rooms, including a couples' salon and a Vichy shower room, and a relaxation area with ottomans, big saucer chairs, wafting curtains and maidens bearing trays of herbal teas and sliced fruit. It's very stylish indeed and a signal that Mirvac is serious about an overall hotel upgrade here.

Pevonia Botanica products are used for super-nourishing facials plus selected items from Li'Tya, the Australian manufacturer that bases its creams, lotions, masks and balms on bush ingredients and Aboriginal remedies. So whether it's having one's feet exfoliated with desert salts and smothered with a native pepperberry mask or succumbing to a top-to-toe marine mud wrap, this spa is all about pampering.

North to those enclaves of luxury

While Cairns is a splendid gateway to the Great Barrier Reef and up to the tablelands, the serious resort-goer heads an hour north along the twisty coast-hugging highway to Palm Cove or Port Douglas.

Both seaside enclaves are home to Sea Temple resorts, also managed by Mirvac and offering glam spas; the Sea Temple Palm Cove has just joined The Australian's Travel & Tourism Awards Winners' Circle for winning the Qantas Frequent Flyer hotel partner category for two consecutive years.

But I am Port Douglas-bound and, still slippery and happily weak-kneed from the Cairns International spa experience, I sink into near-oblivion in one of Sea Temple's swim-out rooms.

There is in this description of swimming out the suggestion of escape by breast-stroke but clearly it's not a case of breaking free as this is a room with a serious loitering factor.

The apartment-style accommodation is a cool and spacious haven of white-dressed beds and bright cushions, Asian-inspired furniture and prints; it is designed for guests to spread out and well-equipped with a full kitchen and laundry. From the covered terrace, encouragingly provided with more furniture of the lying-down variety, it's just a few steps into the palm-bordered lagoon pool with its waterfalls and bridges.

It's almost like having a pool of one's own and to be able to slip into the water – without the carry-on of leaving the room, finding a poolside chair, then realising the sunblock and sombrero are still back in said room – is heaven indeed.

Spa menu as long as your arm

My only complaint about Sea Temple Port Douglas is that you can't swim to the spa: now that would be something to boast about. The resort's menu of 30 therapies is based on Elemis products and there are treatments with names as desirable as exotic moisture dew and herbal lavender repair, all administered in eight creamy-white private rooms that smell of ginger, lime and rosemary.

My mother made do with a lifetime of Oil of Olay and had enviably smooth skin when she died in her 60s. She covered up in the sun but loved the muggy tropics as the humidity, she always said, moisturised the skin and kept one looking younger.

I don't know what she would have made of the spa fandango of the 21st century and perhaps would not have seen much merriment in paying $175 for, say, a 75-minute tri-enzyme resurfacing facial.

But she loved to look good on holidays and always found a beauty salon for a wash and set (and a comb-up for special nights). Maybe we haven't come so far after all. Her salon visits were about me-time as well, although her generation didn't acknowledge it and wouldn't have known their chakras from their corsets. She would approve of ladies lying down and being waited on and not being required to cook dinner and do the washing on holidays.

So perhaps it would be the kitchen and laundry facilities in Sea Temple guestrooms that would appall her. There's no way she'd have packed an apron and her lavender ironing spray along with the sun frocks, sandals and stash of novels.

Fresh seafood with an oriental touch

I feel the same about self-catering and make efficient use of Sea Temple's lagoon-view main restaurant; the cuisine is fresh and inventive, with lots of reef and estuary fish.

Pan-fried barramundi gets an oriental makeover with tempura of soft-shell crab, pickled green papaya and pomelo salad and chilli peanuts. There's a sweet tropical twist to the dessert menu, with coconut creme brulee and rum-roasted bananas or mango and pineapple jelly served with kaffir lime cream and meringue. All delicious and served with style in a high-ceilinged room open to the breeze.

This 194-room resort – featuring studios, two and three-bedroom apartments, penthouses, villas and golf course-facing residences with private plunge pools – opened in mid-2006. It's a swish, well-designed property on a tropical Coral Sea-bordered estate at the southern end of Four Mile Beach and about 5km from Port Douglas's Macrossan Street hub.

Hand me my five iron, honey

Golfers appear to love it to shreds; its golf and country club features an 18-hole course ranked in the top six links-style courses in Australia.

Staff members are young and enthusiastic and there's plenty of undercover parking for guests (a rental car is the way to go; there's much to explore in Port Douglas and its surrounds) and a streamlined flow of facilities.

Built around a massive and meandering lagoon pool, Sea Temple's two-storey blocks of rooms (those on the second level have access to rooftops with barbecues, sundecks and spa tubs) spread in wings from the soaring-roofed and open-sided reception area.

Luxury that doesn't exclude families

Understandably, given the size and safety of the 3000sqm lagoon, Sea Temple is all about worship of water and is a popular family hang-out. During my visit, there are junior swimmers paddling past, mucking about with water wings and beach toys, and a lot of laughter in the air. Parents appear on the steps of swim-out rooms and call their children in for tea. And then call them again. And again. Were she still here, draped in a banana chair, in company with Agatha Christie and Daphne du Maurier, that's something my dear Mum would find very familiar.

Susan Kurosawa was a guest of Mirvac and Tourism Queensland.