The two 12x6 metre billboards located about 10km north and south of Moree are now sporting a brand new graphic, promoting a selection of Moree’s best assets.

“It’s a positive, fresh and crisp new look promoting our unique selling points,” Tourism Moree CEO Tammy Elbourne said.

“It will hopefully drive an emotion for people to stop.

“Then it’s our job as ambassadors of our town – not just us at the Visitor Information Centre but anyone at the cold face of customers – to engage these people to invest in our town, whether it be putting a tank of fuel in their car, buying an icy pole or staying a night or two.”

The new signs work hand-in-hand with Tourism Moree’s other promotional materials, including the new tourism brochure which was released earlier this year.

The signs feature references to Moree’s agritourism, the rich heritage of the Art Deco main street, our indigenous culture, and of course the Moree Artesian Aquatic Centre and the artesian water.

There’s also a photo of a delicious cup of coffee, which Ms Elbourne said is one of the biggest selling points for drivers.

“It shows you can get some of the best cups of coffee by our local baristas,” she said.

“The idea is that people can stop here, they can get a good cup of coffee, they can enjoy themselves here.

“There’s so many elements to our community and we’re trying to get some in there.

“We’ve got the agritourism side of things with the pecans, which is something different and not what they see driving along the highway. It shows the richness of our agricultural production.

“Obviously we’ve got the pools and artesian water with kids coming down the slides and hopefully that would envoke kids to say ‘mummy, let’s stop here’.

“We’ve also got our main street heritage and reference to our indigenous culture.

“It’s a very tricky art as to what people think should be promoted in these signs.

“Drivers are travelling at 100km per hour, so it has to be simple and quite clear – people don’t have time to sit back and look at it.

“We have to make it look professional and lovely for the community, as well as engage in the emotive.”

Tourism Moree has also incorporated a snippet of one of local Aboriginal artist David ‘Crockett’ Craigie’s artworks in the signs as a reference to Moree’s strong indigenous culture.

The artwork features beautiful blues to reference Moree’s artesian water, and Crockett’s style of painting five rings – the middle being Moree and the four around the middle representing the Aboriginal missions that were in Moree when he was growing up in the 60s and 70s.

Crockett said he was honoured to have been asked to be a part of the project.

“It’s a big achievement for me,” he said.

“It’s a great honour being a Moree born-and-bred boy.

“I like to promote my town because I think we’ve got a good town – better than what people make us out to be. When they come here they get a different view.”

Ms Elbourne said the team is proud of the new sign skins, which went up in the last couple of weeks.

“It’s a really positive look and feel about what we want to promote of our town,” she said.

“It’s a professional, fresh welcome to Moree.”