The Best Hotels and Resorts in Australasia: The Gold List 2024
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Consider the Gold List the answer to the question our editors get asked more than any other: what are your favourite places to stay? Our annual collection, passionately selected by our international team, reveals which seaside resort we return to every August and the city hotel that gets everything right. Now all you have to do is pick the experience that’s right for you – and get travelling.
See the full Gold List here.
Courtesy Kokomo Private Island ResorthotelKokomo Private Island Resort
My husband was still my boyfriend when we went to Kokomo Private Island, a villa-only resort on a lush and hilly speck of land in the bright, clear, reef-strewn waters of the Fijian archipelago. Often when we talk about the trip, we tell the story of how, when we turned up at the activity centre to pick up snorkels and flippers, we were asked to rate ourselves as expert, intermediate, or poor swimmers. “Poor!” Tim said with enthusiasm, startling the hotel’s staff (and us) into gales of laughter. Fiji’s much-celebrated friendliness makes it easy to relax and be yourself – which, in Tim’s case, is a landlubber. Luckily there is something for everybody at Kokomo. While I ventured out with a resident marine biologist to swim with manta rays, Tim was happy to linger over a morning latte and an açaí bowl on the deck of the resort’s tropically elegant main restaurant. Afterward, we’d lounge around our more than 1,200-square-foot beachfront villa, read by the private pool, or snooze in a hammock strung between palms.
Our agendas converged right around happy hour, when our biggest struggle was choosing among idyllic spots to enjoy an umbrella-adorned sundowner with an ocean view. There were the chaises on our villa’s patio, of course, or there was Walker d’Plank, named for Kokomo’s owner, the Australian real estate billionaire Lang Walker: a casual Asian fusion restaurant helmed by Fijian chef Caroline Oakley and set on a series of ascending platforms overlooking rocky shallows and a vast Pacific sky tie-dyed coral and orange. There, amid the paradise vibes, a couple of pineapple and basil mojitos might naturally lead to a meal of wahoo tataki, pork dumplings, and prawn curry enlivened with peppers and herbs grown in Kokomo’s on-site 5.5-acre organic farm.
All of it – the delicious food, the manicured grounds, the tranquil spa, the choice between doing as much or as little as one pleases – is, of course, the product of careful consideration and constant labour. But one of Kokomo’s gifts to its guests is an unpunctured sense of ease and effortlessness. What a feat of hospitality that is, to be made to feel like everything is all right and that there are truly no worries, no matter how bad a swimmer one happens to be. Maggie Shipstead
Silky Oakes LodgehotelSilky Oaks Lodge
This spot overlooking the Mossman River in the heart of the lush Daintree Rainforest, the world’s oldest tropical rainforest, has been special ever since it opened in the 1980s. But its 2021 makeover by Baillie Lodges – the Australian brand that specializes in show-stopping properties in remote locations – has elevated it to a whole different level, with the help of Sydney design team Pike Withers. Many of the 40 suites resemble decadent treehouses of polished hardwoods, with stone bathtubs on forest-fringed terraces. The hero lodging is the -two-bedroom, 3,400-square-foot Daintree Pavilion, a contemporary jungle hide with a tiered horizon pool and extensive decking to capture every possible perspective of the surrounding rainforest, which was recently returned to its original custodians, the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people. Everything here is geared towards total immersion in nature and culture – from tapping into local walking tours, on which Kuku Yalanji guides share ancient survival techniques, to Asian-inflected dinners in the soaring, cantilevered Treehouse Restaurant, high in the tropical canopy. At the Healing Waters Spa, the signature Ulysses face and body treatment features a mud bath and Vichy shower over-looking the rainforest. The spa is based on ancient ideas about the Mossman River as a life-giving force – reinforcing the sense that a deep connection to nature is everything here. Kendall Hill
