The setting: a sun-starved traveller sits at an airport gate, cooled to sub-arctic temperatures, shivering but holding onto hope.

Cut to her window seat – the first glint of sunlight bouncing off the tray table, the realisation that the jewel-like wonders of the Great Barrier Reef are visible just below, like ink blots on an endless aquamarine canvas.

“Welcome to Hamilton Island (the traditional lands of the Ngaro people),” comes the sunshine-y voice over the PA after the wheels meet the runway.

A buggy. An all-but-silent whizz past palm trees and linen-clad travellers. She’s sure she’s never seen so many smiling people in one place. Then the handsome lobby of The Sundays comes into view – greenery spilling down terracotta-toned planter boxes, timber panelling and sage-hued seating – depositing her into a weekend she’ll never want to end.

Grown-up, sophisticated, and innately stylish, The Sundays is the first new hotel on the Whitsundays’ (Ngaro Country) most famous island since 2007 – a five-year, $35 million reimagining of what was originally the Palm Terrace. Set above the golden arc of Catseye Beach, with the primordial landscape of Passage Peak beckoning beyond, designer Carrie Williams began with the water that quietly laps the shore.

“For me, the perfect Sunday consists of diving into the beautiful Catseye Beach turquoise water,” she says. “Everything flowed from there.”

Ten years of living on the island – three of them as a mother – helped Williams pair her instinct for “a warm yet fresh interior, with playful modern details” with genuinely functional, family-friendly design. In all 59 rooms, built-in cabinetry has rounded corners, bathtubs are big enough to swim in, and shimmery golden ‘mermoney’ coins appear each day to be traded for ice-cream sundaes from the gelato cart by the pool. Vibrant works by First Nations and Hungarian artist Tiarna Herczeg hang throughout, first painted onto pre-treated timber to withstand the tropics, then replicated as prints on the same material.

The thoughtfulness extends even to the pool departure bathrooms with space for guests to refresh before a flight, so that not a minute of pool time needs to be sacrificed after checkout.

Families are clearly considered, and there’s a new playground within footsteps of rooms, but nothing about The Sundays screams ‘kid zone’. All guests can equally appreciate the smart styling, the welcome rocky road, the sparkling pool and private beach, morning yoga overlooking the sea, and priority bookings at spa wumurdaylin.

Then there’s the food. The hotel’s Catseye Pool Club, serving everything from poolside souvlaki to long, deconstructed family feasts, is the brainchild of culinary duo Josh and Julie Niland of celebrated Paddington institution Saint Peter. Fish is the central character of Josh’s professional life, and it naturally stars on the menu here too, but the spirit of the restaurant is something broader: a love letter to Australian produce.

From the à la carte breakfast through to a dinner that might take in wood grilled pipis with finger lime butter, blistered pizza breads with DIY toppings, or BBQ line-caught coral trout to share, every plate tells the same story. “Queensland has vanilla, coffee, chocolate, mangoes, lobsters, and coral trout,” says Josh. “We’re spoiled for everything.” The ceramics are hand-thrown by a Tasmanian potter; the plating is its own work of art, ensuring you’ll want to photograph it before you eat. It’s also, he notes, naturally suited to how children want to eat. “I don’t think you could generate this restaurant in Sydney,” he says. “It’s too special.”

When we return to our traveller, she’s on a sunlounger, staring wistfully at the pool and the Whitsundays blues beyond. Tomorrow she may be back to reality, but for now she’s sipping her cocktail, suspended in time – somewhere between a paddleboard session with cockatoos overhead, a cultural tour through the stories of the Ngaro people, and the magnetism of the Heart of the Great Barrier Reef just offshore, where she snorkelled just hours before.

The kind of weightlessness, it turns out, that only the best Sundays can offer.