My husband nudges me without moving his head. "That's the Roosters." I look up from the check-in desk and there they are, cutting through the lobby in single file, big and burly and still in their training kit. The recently refurbished InterContinental Coogee Beach is clearly attracting some star power. The kids look impressed and start scoping reception for more celebrities.
We love doing these mini breaks as a family. Trips that don't need passports or seven loads of washing to recover from, just a Saturday night somewhere close enough that nobody melts down in the back seat, but different enough that it doesn't feel like home with room service. Sydney is generous like that. You can drive twenty minutes and land somewhere that feels familiar but different, with a whole new neighbourhood to explore.
The Hotel That Used to Be a Crowne Plaza
The lobby is white on white, modern elegance that's the hallmark of Woods Bagot, the Australian design firm behind the fit out. The lighting is a stand out, geometric fittings treated as an art piece in reception and marble sconces running the length of every corridor.
This building used to be the Crowne Plaza Coogee Beach, a perfectly decent mid-tier hotel most locals had a vague, unbothered relationship with. Salter Brothers, the Melbourne fund manager quietly becoming the largest owner of Crowne Plazas in the country, struck a long-term partnership with IHG to reposition a handful of their properties into proper luxury brands. Coogee got the InterContinental treatment. It reopened in December after a staged renovation, with the final piece, a proper wellness precinct, landing only months ago.
High Tea at Club InterContinental, and an Hour Without Screens
First stop, high tea at the Club Lounge. Within minutes Damo and Max are deep in a game of chess with a set carved from marble. Lulu and I take on a similarly elegant round of noughts and crosses that looks more like a sculpture than a game. We're sitting among potted orchids and filmy linen curtains doing something quite lovely with the late afternoon light when a three-tiered stand arrives without us asking: finger sandwiches, scones with jam and cream, a few other delicacies. Tea for the grown-ups, soft drinks for the kids. No one looks at phones or screens for a full hour. Bliss.
No one looks at phones or screens for a full hour. Bliss.
The Rooms, and the View Doing All the Work
Bellies full and brains satisfyingly challenged, we glide up to our room on the sixth floor. As part of the hotel's 198-room refresh, the rooms have been redone in shades of white and cream with stone floors, all built to showcase the view beyond the balcony, Coogee and the curve of the headland stretching out from it.
Eliva Spa, and a Massage That Finds the Knot
I slip off to the spa for a massage and emerge a very different woman to the one who went in. The spa itself is striking, reception opens onto a courtyard paved in green tiles and dotted with cacti. A curved hallway, lit softly, winds its way through to the thermal and recovery lounges. There's even a Herbal Ritual Bar where your therapist blends your own oils and salts before you've even taken your shoes off.
I'm very pleased to discover my therapist, Stefano, Italian, does not do the polite hotel-spa version of firm pressure. I loathe those "relaxing massages" that feel more like being tickled. If, like me, you want a massage that finds the knot and actually dismantles it, ask for him. I get a peek into the thermal lounge on the way out and get so excited I book Damien and myself back in for the next morning.
Aperitif Hour, and It's All Included
I get back to the room feeling so floaty I can't be bothered with hair or makeup. I throw on a dress and head straight down to meet the others in the lounge. Club access gets you the sunset version of this hotel, proper cocktails and canapes, all included, no small print. I order a spritz, then something with tequila and coconut water that feels positively healthy.
Rick Stein at Coogee Beach, or Shutters With the Kids
The full occasion here is Rick Stein at Coogee Beach, his first Sydney restaurant after years quietly perfecting things in Mollymook and Port Stephens, 224 seats doing fresh seafood simply and with real conviction. We opt for the simpler Shutters instead, because our kids just wouldn't appreciate it. Relaxed, modern Australian with a Mediterranean lean, it turns out to be the right call. There's a proper kids menu and colouring in on the table, which buys us a solid twenty minutes of actual adult conversation, and the food itself is seasonal and unfussy without feeling like an afterthought to the grown-ups' meal.
Breakfast, Then the Thermal Circuit
Breakfast is served in the same room we'd had dinner in, transformed by the morning light, duck-egg-blue banquettes, fiddle-leaf figs, a buffet that's abundant without tipping into chaos. I head straight for the DIY juice station, order an egg white omelette and grab sourdough piled with seeded avocado. I try to ignore the kids' questionable choices involving pancakes, syrup and copious packets of Nutella and sip my latte appreciatively.
Sugar hangover safely contained back in the room, Damien and I head to the spa for the thermal circuit. It's a seriously impressive set up. A traditional sauna lined in salt brick, dry heat that gets into your shoulders in about ninety seconds. A steam room tiled in mosaic, big enough that you're not sharing air with a stranger's elbow. An infrared sauna, roomy, the kind you could properly read a book in, if you'd thought to bring one, which I hadn't. Outside, three hot tubs at climbing temperatures and two ice baths, all built by Stoked, a New Zealand outfit that hand-welds their tubs from marine-grade stainless steel, which is why the water feels so clean rather than chlorine-clean. The ice bath is arctic at four degrees. I make it to my knees and call it a personal best. Damien, showing off in the way husbands do when there's an audience of exactly one, goes all the way under. A stint in each hot room and a jump under the vitamin C-infused cold shower and we feel properly renewed. Damo heads out to take the kids to the pool. I go for round two, a touchless therapy in the recovery lounge, the vibroacoustic bed.
I make it to my knees and call it a personal best.
The Vibroacoustic Bed That Converted Me
I'm sceptical at first. It seems to be just a bed with a sub-woofer built in, that will vibrate in time with the music through the headphones. I'm not expecting much. I ask the therapist how long it takes. Thirty minutes. "I'll probably just do ten," I tell her. "Get some content, then head back to the pool. Thanks so much." She nods knowingly, fits my headphones, angles a red light at my face and swishes the curtain closed with a smile.
First song, some deep breathing, second song, and then, whoomp. It feels like slipping into a very deep meditation. My whole nervous system quietly powers down, the way it does maybe twice a year on a very good holiday. Time disintegrates. I puddle across the lounge, wondering if Damo can build one of these things for me at home. I've tried touchless therapies before and found them pretty average, I always prefer a therapist actually doing their thing, but this is something else entirely.
It feels like slipping into a very deep meditation.
When my time is up I feel bereft. I stumble into the showers, sit on the marble bench, (what a thoughtful touch!) and enjoy the thrum of the water while I massage Byredo Bal d'Afrique into my scalp. It takes a good twenty minutes to come to, properly. I'm dopey in the most wonderful way, drying my hair with the Dyson, dressing languidly.
The Infinity Pool, in Proper Winter Sun
We check out and stow the bags so we can spend a few hours poolside before the drive home. The infinity pool is heated, the winter sun is cranking, and we stretch out on daybeds wide enough to get lost in, working our way through the menu. Packing the car, we realise we never actually made it down to the beach, twenty metres away the whole time. Gordons Bay and Wylie's Baths will have to wait for next time. We'd had a full wellness reboot in under twenty four hours without once putting a toe in the ocean we came for. Hard to argue with that kind of efficiency.
We'd had a full wellness reboot in under twenty four hours without once putting a toe in the ocean we came for.
InterContinental Sydney Coogee Beach is at 242 Arden Street, Coogee. Eliva Spa and Wellness is on level one and takes day bookings from locals as well as hotel guests. Rick Stein at Coogee Beach and Shutters Restaurant and Bar are both open to the public.
Sigourney was hosted by InterContinental Sydney Coogee Beach.
