Why one of France’s most famous champagne houses went to the outback

The charter flight from Cairns takes 22 minutes. For the first part we’re over sparkling blue ocean; then it starts to rain. Soon we can see nothing outside the windows but white. There’s a fair amount of gripping of armrests.

Then, just as suddenly, we emerge from the clouds. The landscape beneath us shows that we’ve entered a different world: no more ocean, just scattered eucalyptus trees and red earth stretching for kilometres until we spot the giant sandstone escarpment of Mount Mulligan and eventually the Mt Mulligan Lodge, looking every bit an oasis.

We land smoothly – and gratefully – beside a couple of tough-looking safari-style vehicles. Beside them, elegantly dressed waiters hold trays of perfectly chilled champagne. It’s an excellent introduction to a place where the environment is rugged, but the experience is decidedly not.

I’m here for the world’s first Veuve Clicquot Sun Escape, a luxury lodge takeover that is the latest in the champagne house’s long pursuit of joy under the sun. This is probably a good moment for a small lesson in etiquette. In French, veuve simply means widow, and the name refers to Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin, who was 27 when her husband François died in 1805, leaving her to take over the family champagne house in Reims, France, a job almost no woman of her era held. If you want to look like you know your bubbles, you should only ever call it Clicquot, never Veuve, which essentially means you’re asking for a glass of widow.

The Widow Clicquot turned out to be exceptionally good at her job, becoming known as La Grande Dame of Champagne. She went on to perfect the riddling table that still clears sediment from bottles, and is credited with the first vintage champagne and the first blended rosé. The yellow label she popularised, formally registered in 1877, has become shorthand for what the house now calls its solaire spirit: sunshine, optimism, food, champagne and the particular pleasure of bringing people together somewhere beautiful.

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That philosophy has become a travelling series of takeovers, from après-ski Clicquot in the Snow at Aspen’s Ajax Tavern to summer pool decks in Singapore, Toronto and Las Vegas, a Sydney Harbour superyacht, and Le Picnic, its dressed up take on day drinking, staged near the vineyards of Reims and on a Paris rooftop. Mount Mulligan is the first time the idea has travelled to the rugged outback.

Mount Mulligan, or Ngarrabullgan, is eight times the size of Uluru, and the Mt Mulligan Lodge sits on a 28,000-hectare working cattle station, taking just 28 guests at a time. Its shared spaces are chic, but relaxed rather than showy: a lofty main pavilion opening onto an infinity pool that sits at the edge of the water, a river weir that, we’re told, has a resident crocodile, although it’s apparently perfectly safe for paddleboarding and kayaking. (No one in my group wants to test this.)

In my suite on the river, a bottle of Yellow Label waits on ice. I open it while running the open-air tin bath on the deck (so deep it takes 40 minutes to fill), one eye looking out for the croc.

That evening we’re driven up to a lookout for golden hour, where the sun goes down behind the mountain and we drink Veuve Clicquot Rosé the exact colour of the sky.

Later the lodge’s chefs cook dinner over open flame: Balmain bugs in Café de Paris butter, tiger prawns with a chimichurri beurre blanc, a bone-in rib-eye. The dish of the night is a side of sweet potato slathered in honeycomb and sage butter. It’s all eaten under the stars and paired with different vintages of La Grande Dame, the house’s prestige cuvée, including La Grande Dame Brut 2018.

Years ending in eight tend to be good ones for champagne, although nobody quite knows why. (1928 and 1988 are both revered, and La Grande Dame 2008 is considered one of the all-time greats. It’s perhaps more than a coincidence that Monsieur and Madame Clicquot married in 1798 too.)

The next morning we meet at 5.30am – thankfully recalling how if you only drink champagne, you don’t get a hangover – to watch the sunrise. We drive in a convoy of our own Clicquot-branded yellow ATVs, wearing goggles and dust masks. The Brahman cross-cattle watch us impassively as we pass by the ruins of the old Mount Mulligan township, abandoned in 1958.

Once there, we take in the vastness of the mountain as the sun rises and its face throws back a shifting slideshow of orange. Ngarrabullgan is sacred to the Kuku Djungan people, with occupation dating back some 37,000 years, and believed to be the birthplace of the Dreamtime’s Rainbow Serpent. We’re warned not to take anything of nature from the mountain unless we want bad luck to fall upon us, and we all look out for the wedge-tailed eagles, a sighting of which is supposed to be a sign that you’re on the right path in life. We didn’t spot any, but breakfast, delicious and eaten around the Lodge’s mineral pool, tells us so anyway.

It’s tempting to laze here all day (there’s a poolside canapé menu calling my name) but we commit to a hike. The walk is steep enough to be satisfying without being punishing, and the reward is a natural swimming hole tucked into the rocks. The water is clean and cool, and with butterflies fluttering around the rock face that rises high above us, it definitely feels like there’s some bush magic around. I drag myself away and feel I’ve earned those canapes while I wait for the hero event of the stay: one of Clicquot’s beloved Le Picnics.

This one is set up poolside, with a menu by Melbourne chef Audrey Shaw of Fitzroy’s Carnation Canteen. She sends out a classic prawn cocktail, perfect for Queensland, and marinates the coral trout for the linguine in Yellow Label. A DJ plays, the sun slides down, and we sit talking late into the night with our feet dangling in the pool.

Madame Clicquot once said she wanted her brand “to rank first, from New York to Saint Petersburg”. I suspect that, with her pioneering spirit, she would have been delighted to add Far North Queensland to the list.

STAY Veuve Clicquot Sun Escape at Mt Mulligan Lodge is available from October 1, 2026 to August 31, 2027 as either a Luxury Couples Experience for two nights including helicopter transfers and dining, from $27,300 per couple, or as a Luxury Takeover for three nights for up to 28 guests, price on application. See shop.veuveclicquot.com.au

The writer travelled as a guest of Veuve Clicquot.

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