Metung Hot Springs, Victoria
A haven of wellness with glamping accommodation has opened in Gippsland. Here’s our verdict.
The Japanese get it. So do the Scandinavians. And as someone who grew up in geothermal New Zealand, I too am duty-bound to seek out any opportunity to marinate in mineral water. So in November, when the ribbon was finally cut on the $12m Metung Hot Springs, a promised haven of hot pools, glamping and wellness on Victoria’s Gippsland Lakes, I was already dressed in my bathers.
It’s four hours’ drive east from Melbourne to the lakeside village of Metung, but I make excellent time. In fact, it appears I’ve arrived before the hot springs have even been built. Temporary fences, string line and star pickets stake out what’s quite clearly a construction site. Earthworks equipment is dotted along a denuded valley, with terraces carved into the hillside like an open cut mine. As I’m standing there scratching my head, wondering if I’ve misread the press release, a golf buggy pulls up. “Jump in,” the driver says with a wink. “All will be revealed.”
Geothermal springs were chanced upon under Metung in the 1920s when prospectors were drilling for oil. In the ’70s free, council-run hot pools were built in a small park near the town, and much adored by residents. Rachel Bromage was one of those locals left heartbroken when the facility closed in the mid-1990s, and for more than a decade has been hatching a plan with her husband Adrian to bring them back.
“It seems surreal,” she says. “But it’s finally happening.”
The couple’s grand vision piqued the interest of Charles Davidson, founder of Victoria’s famed Peninsula Hot Springs on the Mornington Peninsula, who suggested they pool resources (pardon the pun). It was Davidson who discovered the Metung site three years ago, from which geothermal water is drawn from an aquifer 500m below the ground.
“Charles said he’d never seen anything so purpose-made by nature for a hot-springs development,” says Bromage. “It’s been non-stop since then.”
Like Peninsula Hot Springs, the plan is to grow organically, opening in stages, with demand driving development. “It will take time, and we’re realistic about that,” says Bromage.
That explains the construction site that greeted me, but the promised revelation comes as I’m led down a path to find a fully realised jungle village, with safari tents nestled into the hillside and perched on stilts over a spring-fed lagoon. Ferns and rock gardens fill the spaces between, with festoon lights strung overhead. While the papery bark of the spindly tea-trees screams coastal Australia, the atmosphere is worldly, evoking safari lodges of South Africa, river villages of Thailand, even mountain camps of Uganda.
An RFID bracelet unlocks the door to my glamping villa (you can’t really call it a tent), home to a stunning four-poster bed, tiled ensuite and recycled teak chairs with leather as smooth as the floorboards. My personal hot springs are on tap, literally, day and night, with two wine barrels sunk into the deck; they fill with geothermal water at the flick of a switch. A recycled timber breakfast bar and a couple of plump beanbags complete the outdoor setting, ringed by a brushwood screen. Lagoon-side lodgers hit the jackpot, and can stew in their wine barrels as turtles cruise by and birds skylark across the water.
My A.H. Beard bed has a custom-designed mattress called “float”, and that’s exactly what I do all night, stirring at sunrise to a chorus of birdcall, followed by the frantic drumming of rain on canvas, the downpour releasing that sweet scent of the bush. This is the beauty of camping. The canvas walls amplify your senses and bring you closer to nature, a magic unadulterated by luxe furnishings. It’s the best of both worlds. I complete the morning camping ritual of rolling up my canvas window shade, fastening it with an elastic strap and toggle. Sunlight streams in, filtered through the ferns, and I think: “Well, isn’t this perfect?”
In the near future, the resort will boast an ornamental freshwater river lined with more hot pools, an amphitheatre for concerts (taking shape from the terrace cuttings I saw on arrival), a restaurant with resort-style accommodation, and a 350-berth marina, so that in true Gippsland Lakes-style, guests can arrive by boat.
There’s already plenty to keep guests occupied. I spend a morning rotating through the emerald waters of the bathing pools, the Scandinavian sauna, the thermal water showers and the cold plunge pool (OK, I skip the last one). Across the valley, the hilltop escarpment bathing area presides over Lake King, smooth as a shield. I arrive to find people bobbing in hot water barrels, which remind me of cannibals’ cauldrons. Combined with the cinematic, clifftop setting, I can’t help thinking the scene resembles a sacrificial ritual, albeit one I’m more than happy to offer myself up for.
Metung Hot Springs has taken over the Kings Cove Golf Club, a nine-hole public course up the road. Rebranded the Metung Country Club, it’s where welcome canapes and cooked breakfasts for glampers are served. Having to drive to breakfast is not ideal, and the kitchen doesn’t stir until well after 8am, meaning I’m rushed for my 9am spa treatment, but the food is faultless and the kinks are no doubt being ironed out as the resort finds its feet.
The tyranny of distance will be a far greater challenge for this venture, but the hope is the hot springs become the beacon that draws visitors to explore the wider pleasures of East Gippsland, of which there are many. Paynesville’s canals and glossy yachts might pass for a boutique Broadwater, but life drifts by at a slower pace. A popular activity is to take the ferry to Raymond Island, hire a Surrey bike and go koala spotting. The town is also home to one of Victoria’s finest regional restaurants, Sardine.
Head chef Mark Briggs starts every day scouring Gippsland for the freshest produce to plate up that night. “It’s a never-ending bounty,” he says as he delivers the eatery’s namesake dish, whole grilled sardines seasoned with chilli, garlic and parsley. I finish with a dessert of panna cotta served with mulberries sourced up the road in Bruthen.
Seafood is naturally front and centre at Sodafish, a floating restaurant that was once the Raymond Island Ferry but is now tethered to a mooring at Lakes Entrance, shoulder to shoulder with the fishing boats that supply the catch of day for this smart-casual venue. Here, they talk about food metres, not food miles.
It’s most definitely miles not metres that stand between me and Melbourne, but a relaxation massage in Metung’s “banksia spa dome” promises to have me confronting the Monash Freeway with a supple posture and unflappable mindfulness. I lie face down, listening to a recorded soundtrack of kookaburras and magpies, lathered in a signature oil called Metung Mist. When I step outside the misty rain is all too real. So is the birdcall. It’s like I’m slowly waking from sleep, not yet cognisant enough to tell if I’m still dreaming. In a way, it hardly matters.
Ricky French was a guest of Visit Victoria.
In the know
Metung Hot Springs is 300km east of Melbourne. Glamping from $550 a night, solo or twin-share; includes hot springs bathing. Glamping plus grazing box, spa treatments, welcome canapes and breakfast from $970. Bathing only from $30; spa treatments from $210 (includes bathing).