A 22-minute charter flight from Cairns ends on a red-dirt airstrip beside Mt Mulligan Lodge, where waiters in the middle of nowhere are holding trays of chilled champagne. That's the arrival ritual for the world's first Veuve Clicquot Sun Escape, a luxury takeover of one of Queensland's most remote high-end lodges — the first time the French house has staged its travelling series in the outback.
The setting earns the drama. Mount Mulligan — Ngarrabullgan to the Kuku Djungan people, who have lived in the area for some 37,000 years — is a sandstone massif eight times the size of Uluru. The lodge itself sits on a 28,000-hectare working cattle station and sleeps just 28 guests, with an infinity pool on a river weir (home, allegedly, to a crocodile), open-air tin baths deep enough to take 40 minutes to fill, and suites with Yellow Label waiting on ice.
The programme mixes champagne theatre with genuine outback experience. Guests are driven to a lookout for golden-hour rosé as the sun drops behind the escarpment, then dine on flame-cooked Balmain bugs, tiger prawns and rib-eye under the stars, paired with vintages of the house's prestige cuvée La Grande Dame — including the well-reviewed 2018. Sunrise means a convoy of Clicquot-yellow ATVs past the ruins of the old mining township, abandoned in 1958, and a steep-but-fair hike to a natural swimming hole. The takeover edition adds a poolside Le Picnic with a menu from Melbourne chef Audrey Shaw of Fitzroy's Carnation Canteen, featuring coral trout linguine marinated in Yellow Label.
Worth knowing before you order: in France, "veuve" means widow — the house is named for Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin, who took over the Reims champagne business at 27 after her husband's death in 1805 and went on to invent the riddling table, the first vintage champagne and the first blended rosé. In-the-know drinkers ask for "Clicquot", never "Veuve".
The Sun Escape runs from October 1, 2026 to August 31, 2027. A two-night Luxury Couples Experience with helicopter transfers and dining starts at $27,300 per couple; a three-night Luxury Takeover for the full 28 guests is priced on application. It's squarely a splurge — but it bundles transfers, all dining and a rare combination of serious champagne and genuine outback solitude into one booking.
