The first stay was in a two-bedroom apartment at Picnic Point, nestled in one of Noosa’s most prestigious pockets. It’s close enough to Hastings Street and Noosa Main Beach to make wandering down feel effortless, yet far enough away to avoid the full holiday parade of families negotiating ice-cream diplomacy in public.

The apartment itself was a tonic. Spacious and beautifully positioned, it had the sort of views that make you momentarily forget your inbox exists. From the windows and balcony, Noosa appeared in layers from lush greenery to the horizon of calming ocean. It was elegant without being stiff and incredibly comfortable.

A two-bedroom apartment is one of civilisation’s greater inventions. It allows people to travel together without beginning each morning in a state of territorial dispute over bathroom access. At Picnic Point, there was room to spread out, make coffee, open the doors and pretend, for a few glorious days, that this was simply how one lived.

The second property, The Rise at 14/37 Noosa Drive, offered a more contemporary kind of coastal luxury.

Spread across two floors, it felt generous and beautifully designed for families, couples or anyone who appreciates the emotional importance of having an upstairs and a downstairs. One bedroom is upstairs, the other downstairs, opening onto a lovely courtyard with a patch of lush grass.

This may sound like a modest detail, but after a day of beach, shops and chocolate-related reckoning, a private green space becomes significant. It’s where one stands barefoot, holding a drink, and makes large, unrealistic statements about changing one’s life.

The Rise has everything required for a properly comfortable stay. There’s the open-plan living and dining spaces, modern bathrooms, air conditioning, laundry facilities, secure parking and a well-equipped kitchen with quality appliances. It’s the sort of kitchen that makes even cutting up fruit feel like an achievement in domestic elegance. There are furnished outdoor areas too, perfect for breakfast or the noble holiday sport of sitting down and refusing to move.

The wider complex adds another layer of temptation, with a heated infinity-edge pool and spa pool. Noosa encourages ambition, sometimes dangerously. You may announce plans to walk the Noosa National Park coastal track, explore the Fairy Pools, kayak through the Noosa Everglades, browse Belmondos Organic Market and drive into the hinterland for lunch at Pomona.

All of these are excellent ideas. Noosa is full of them. Main Beach sparkles, Hastings Street hums, the National Park delivers beauty with alarming efficiency, and the Everglades offer a serene, mirror-like wilderness that feels a world away from boutique windows and takeaway coffees.

But equally, you may find yourself by the pool, doing very little, and discover that doing very little in Noosa is not laziness at all. It is a sophisticated form of environmental appreciation.

That is the pleasure of Allawah Noosa. The apartments give you access to the best of Noosa while also giving you a place you genuinely want to return to. They offer the comfort to make the holiday feel indulgent as well as the practicality to stop the holiday descending into the usual domestic farce of missing chargers and damp swimmers.

Noosa already knows how to seduce a traveller. It has the beaches, the restaurants, the walks, the river, the hinterland and, as I now know, the hot chocolate. But Allawah Noosa makes the seduction considerably more comfortable. It offers the rare luxury of feeling at home somewhere far better appointed than home.

And if that is not a reason to return, the rocky road hot chocolate certainly is.

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