My kids can now buy their own cocktails, but I still love taking holidays with them

The veranda at the Noosa Surf Club overlooking the beach was teeming with people shuffling chairs and edging towards the balustrades. At 5pm, this was a popular venue for sundowners. I was with my three adult children (son, 22, boy-girl twins, 19) sipping icy cold beers and feasting on a decadent bucket of fresh prawns, the club’s signature dish.

In our family, holidays are known as “Yes Weeks”. In a single-parent household, money was usually tight and I often said no to non-essentials. Holidays, however, were always something I prioritised. When it was Yes Week, I loosened the purse strings and fun reigned.

Can we have ice cream? Can we eat donuts? Can we go parasailing? Swim with green turtles? Sleep in our bathers? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

The mental and physical load of solo parenting is heavy, especially on holidays. I was head of the budgeting, planning, packing, booking, transport, nutrition, finance and safety department every time we left the house. But I believed that travel would give my children a deeper understanding of the world. From zorbing (getting inside a blow-up ball and being pushed down a hill) in Vanuatu and donating supplies to local schools in Fiji, pretending to be hobbits in New Zealand and exploring Victoria’s coast and bush, our trips were always exhilarating.

That doesn’t mean that my kids and I would always agree on what makes a perfect holiday. My idea of relaxation is having long stretches of time to read, and even longer stretches of time to spend in a day spa being pampered. This has consistently clashed with my kids’ preferences for waterslides, theme parks and quad bike tours over the past two decades.

My children are all adults now, and we’ve arrived at a new stage of family travel.

With this in mind, we went to Noosa to stay at a stylish three-bedroom apartment at Allawah Noosa . Our Designer Sanctuary apartment had a pool with a spa, a family sized kitchen and views of the water in the distance. The best thing about it though was its proximity to the town’s attractions. It was at the midway point between Noosa Junction Plaza, a hive of activity for low-key shopping and cafe-style dining, and Hastings Street, the beachside strip of swimwear and event wear shops, high-end restaurants and surf shops.

With only a five-minute walk in either direction, we didn’t need to hire a car. Niche Transfers arrived to pick us up at the airport. No responsibility, no car insurance; just a smooth ride to start our holiday.

At Coya, a Peruvian restaurant in Noosa Junction, we tried a new cuisine. Lubina Clásica, a ceviche dish in tiger’s milk (a citrus marinade) served with spicy chicken anticuchos (meat skewers), is a hit. I even convinced the kids to try some char-grilled watermelon. There were no tantrums, no teenage moods and no arguments about who would be sitting next to me.

During the week, as my daughter and I sat at the bar at Bang Bang captivated by the bartender crafting colourful cocktails, my phone buzzed. My two sons had found a bar in Noosa Junction and every 20 minutes or so my phone would ping with another notification that my credit card had been used.