Councillor Humphries said although the construction had already started, the ceremony was significant to mark the start of a world-class facility, which is hoped to be built within the next four months.

During the ceremony, Cr Humphries invited locals to be a part of the naming process for the facility.

“It’s the community’s water ski park so it is important that people have a stake in it,” she said.

“So I think this is a great opportunity for the community so be part of the history of Moree and get involved.”

A driving force behind the project, and fellow councillor James Von Drehnen, said it was exciting to see the sod turning event after many years of overcoming challenges which arose when developing the facility.

“I’m particularly excited that local contractors Wilde Civil got the job. They’ve started building the main circuit lake, which is the recreational, rectangular lake and is about 1.1 kilometres long and over 100 metres wide,” Cr Von Drehnen said.

Another driving force for the council was - after being told the spent artesian spa water from the Moree Artesian Aquatic Centre could not be released in the river - to use the water to fill the lakes so it was not wasted, making it a win, win for both the council and the community.

“Council were focused on protecting the pool industry and we had the opportunity to change a few things around and make the designs, meeting the environmental goals, to create water ski lakes and a beneficial project for the town,” Cr Von Drehnen said.

Since its inception the Australian Waterski and Wakeboard Federation and the Tournament Water Ski Australia organisations have supported the project.

“(They have) absolutely shown interest in using the facility for tournaments. It is hard for the organisations to get access to sites that allow tournaments and a lot of the time they hold them in rivers and reservoirs which has safety issues,” he said.

As the lakes are being built to the Australian standard, Cr Von Drehnen hopes the future will be bright and busy for the facility.

“Hopefully we’ll see water skiing, rowing, dragon boat racing, jet skiing, wakeboarding, canoeing and kayaking, as well as the use of our two tournament lakes (800 metres long) which could see Moree hosting state, regional, national and even international tournaments,” he said.

Once the building process has ended, MPSC will hand over the water ski lakes to the local water ski club, and their duty will be to develop the site.

“Personally I’d like to see camping, fishing and boating shows held in Moree, along with yabby festivals and who knows, there may be a few fish that escape from the fish farm and make it to the ski lakes for some fishing,” he said.

Cr Von Drehnen said the local water ski club’s expenditure would come from club membership and a boat permit system which would have to be enforced for safety issues once the facility had officially opened.

“We’ve got about 30 of the founding members of the club, which is around 100 people, who already pay membership,” he said.

Cr Von Drehnen mentioned there would be a number of constraints imposed on the local water ski club once the handover takes place.

“Such as operating hours, noise restrictions, the number of boats in the water and different environmental practises… So once the lakes have been built it will still be a process once establishing the running of the facility,” Cr Von Drehnen said.

The council chose the site for the lakes as it was one of the few flood free areas with suitable soils and underlying geology and had no direct connection to ground water, an essential requirement for development.