Nature sets the morning alarm at Metung Hot Springs, and there is no hitting the snooze button. It’s still dark when the sound of wood ducks splashing in the freshwater lagoon below first floats up the hill to our glamping tent.
It’s my last night on MSC Euribia and I’m conflicted. I want to listen to “Ed Sheeran” in the Delphi Theatre at 9.30pm, but “Adele” is playing in the Carousel Lounge at the opposite stern end of the ship at exactly the same time.
The first night I spend in Kakadu National Park is in a sleeping bag in a camper-trailer at Merl campsite – $30 for two people – doused in mosquito repellent but buzzing from watching sunset over the plains from the ancient Ubirr rock-art site.
On the junction of the Murray and Campaspe rivers in Victoria’s north, Echuca is named for an Aboriginal word meaning “meeting of the waters” to the area’s Yorta Yorta first inhabitants.
