Boutique and Luxury Hotels New South Wales

New South Wales is the original Australian state, the one the British colonised first and the one that contains the harbour everyone arrives at. Sydney is the obvious gravitational centre — the Opera House on Bennelong Point, the Harbour Bridge climbed by tourists in lime-green overalls, the long curve of Bondi to Coogee, the warehouses-turned-restaurants of Surry Hills, the modernist beach houses of Palm Beach an hour up the coast. But the state is much larger than its capital. The Blue Mountains rise an hour west, sandstone escarpments cut by valleys of eucalyptus mist (the blue is real — the haze is volatile oils released by the trees). The Hunter Valley, two hours north, is one of Australia's oldest wine regions, Semillon and Shiraz country. Byron Bay sits at the state's northern tip, the easternmost point of the Australian mainland, surf and rainforest and the lighthouse on the cliff. The mid-coast — Port Macquarie, Coffs Harbour, Yamba — strings unbroken Pacific beaches between national parks.

The boutique scene in New South Wales is concentrated in two places: heritage Sydney terraces reworked into design hotels, and coastal properties where the architecture frames the Pacific rather than competing with it.

Mantra The Observatory sits on the Port Macquarie waterfront, mid-coast, where the Hastings River meets the ocean — a beachfront property a short walk from the town centre, with the koala hospital and Sea Acres rainforest on the doorstep.

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