Celebrity Eclipse to arrive in Melbourne in December 2020

AUSTRALIA HOME

It's now less than a year before Celebrity Eclipse sails into Melbourne as the newest Celebrity Cruises ship ever to homeport in Victoria. The ship arrives on December 23, 2020 from Singapore via Sydney and New Zealand, and will join sister ship Celebrity Solstice in sailing around Australia's east coast, New Zealand and the South Pacific during the company's biggest season in Australia. Among the itineraries is a 12-night Great Barrier Reef cruise departing on January 3, 2021, and a 14-night South Pacific cruise to New Caledonia and Vanuatu on February 6, 2021.

Phone 1800 754 500. See celebritycruises.com.au

THAT'S THE SPIRIT

The American Queen Steamboat Company has a new seven-night cruise on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers in the US that take guests behind the scenes of Kentucky's bourbon region to discover where bourbon comes from and how it is made, and to taste bourbon at distillery doors. The Bourbon and Blues river itinerary departs Louisville in Kentucky on July 5, 2020 aboard the brand-new paddlewheel riverboat American Countess. The seven-night cruise will also feature live blues performances, cooking demonstrations, special guest historians and several hop-on, hop-off shore excursions; and finishes in Memphis in Tennessee.

Phone 1800 507 777. See cruisetraveller.com.au

TOTAL ECLIPSE

Aurora Expeditions has announced special guests for its Antarctic solar eclipse voyage in December 2021. Dr Ulyana Horodyskyj, a geologist, glaciologist, mountaineer and visiting professor of environmental science at Colorado College will join the cruise. Dr Horodyskyj was chosen as mission commander for an on-the-ground deep space mission with NASA and was a semifinalist for NASA's 2017 astronaut class. Further special guests will be announced soon. Passengers will see the spectacle of the full eclipse (only visible from Antarctica) on December 4, 2021 aboard the cruise company's recently-launched polar-class ship, Greg Mortimer. The 22-day cruise departs Ushuaia in Argentina and visits the South Shetland Islands, Antarctic Peninsula, Elephant Island, South Georgia and the Falklands.

Phone 1800 637 688. See auroraexpeditions.com.au