Few have the front to go from selling coach tours along Victoria’s Great Ocean Road to competing head-on in the cutthroat market of luxury European river cruising. But Glen Moroney, the founder and owner of Scenic Luxury Cruises and Tours – and still the only Australian to build a cruise line at scale internationally – is from Newcastle.

“Not much fazes me, at least that’s what I like to tell myself,” he says from aboard his newest baby, the Scenic Eclipse II, built to tackle Antarctica when it’s not sailing the warmer waters of the Med or the Caribbean. “Ask anyone who knows me – I’m not the type to get intimidated.”