Although it's not due to be officially opened for another few months, the new recreational water park at Hughenden is having water pumped in.
The pump from the Flinders River was turned on once the earthworks stage, undertaken by Cheshire Contractors, was completed earlier this week.
Flinders shire mayor Jane McNamara said council had a licence to pump out of the river and so they would use what water they could from that source while it was still flowing, to cover the new artificial lake to a depth of one metre.
"We need to keep the bottom moist for soakage purposes now," she said. "Being winter there shouldn't be too much evaporation and it will get fish habitats established."
Their preferred way of filling the lake would ordinarily be by overland flow, which is what happened in the extraordinary weather event in February, but that had to be pumped out to get earthworks completed.
Work on the $6m project was begun in April 2018.
Some 750,000 cubic metres of soil was moved to make the new water attraction, which has a capacity of 740mL and an average depth of 3.2m.
It takes up 23ha of space on the outskirts of Hughenden and will have a 2.9km pathway circling it, as well as two beaches, a boat launch area for skiing, a fishing jetty, and even a waterfall.
Cr McNamara said the contractors would now be busy undertaking landscaping and erecting structures and playground equipment.
They were preparing for an October opening, if they could get enough rain to run more water in.
The $6m recreational lake, hailed as promoting liveability for residents and a new tourist attraction, has been constructed with the assistance of a federal $4.1m Building Better Regions grant.