Peppers Anchorage Resort, Port Stephens review: Driven to fine distractions

Met by excellent food and massages after a nightmare drive, Lisa Carty can't stay cranky for long.

Here's the thing about Port Stephens - it doesn't really exist. To be accurate, it's a big body of water, a local government area and a state electorate but it's not a town. So there we were, my post-HSC 18-year-old daughter, Jess, and I, calmly driving along the Pacific Highway on a hot morning, happily expecting to arrive at our destination in plenty of time for our afternoon massages. Stupidly, knowing Port Stephens is a popular holiday spot but never having actually been there, I thought there would be lots of signs. Big signs.

It was only when we saw signs for Hawks Nest that I wondered whether we had gone too far.

"Have you seen a sign?" I asked with an edge of panic. "Yeah, I saw a little one ages ago," Jess replied. "WHY DIDN'T YOU SAY SOMETHING?" I screeched in a decidedly non-mini-break tone. "You always know where you're going, so I thought you knew how to get there," Jess said.

It's true. I know a lot of places and have a good sense of direction but Port Stephens - more precisely, Peppers Anchorage Resort, Corlette, eluded me. I rang for directions. It all got complicated and stressful. In the end, Jess had only 40 minutes of what was meant to be a one-hour massage. But it was a great massage and in the same way Bill Bryson and Stephen Katz awarded themselves bonus miles on the Appalachian Trail because it was hilly, she reckoned the 40 minutes was equal to an hour.

Then it was my turn. My crankiness faded as I sank into total relaxation. That's the thing with holiday massages - it's OK if they just feel fantastic. At home, you feel obliged to ensure it's painful because you know it's doing you good.

Fortunately, given the day's dramas, we were having dinner in-house at the Anchorage's Merretts Restaurant. The food and service were fantastic and certainly on par with many of Sydney's good dinner venues. We both had the seafood trio entree - seared scallop on potato with olive oil, caper and raisin emulsion; butter-poached baby calamari with chilli jam; and crab meat, avocado bavarois and mango with cumin crisp. Jess chose the duck breast main and I had a black Angus fillet. We were full but the strawberry macaroon with berries and strawberry ice-cream and the ravioli of lychee creme brulee with sweet ginger and lemongrass syrup were irresistible.

The next morning, scenes at Peppers' spa and in the restaurant at breakfast illustrated how worlds collide. At the spa, I met a woman from Sydney's northern beaches. She and her husband and their five-year-old son were spending their nights sleeping on their boat, moored at the marina next to Peppers. A pregnant woman and her husband arrived. Their baby was due in a month and it was their last hurrah.

My daughter walked in, all long legs and long hair, looking glam. It didn't seem long ago that I was anxiously awaiting her birth and suddenly she had finished school and was about to head overseas. For years.