Southern 80 spectators watch on in amazement

Not to mention the food glorious food.

The smell of delicious food wafted through the air and caught the attention of your nose before it caught your eye, drawing you towards the food.

Organisers catered to all tastes with burgers, dumplings, potato twists, dim sims, calamari, wood fired pizza, baked potatoes, donuts, ice-cream and hot drinks on offer.

Early morning spectators lined up to grab a steaming cup of coffee from vendor Coffee Addiction before later moving on to the harder stuff at the bar.

But it was the potato twists that seemed to be clutched in just about every hand — a clear crowd favourite.

Under-14 expert class skiers Max McCallum and Archer Gerrand were straight out of the water and straight to the food vendors for a potato twist, after showing off their skills behind local boat Showbiz.

Max, who hails from Moama, oozes confidence in the water.

So much so that he could even be seen singing along to himself as he was being pulled through the river.

You can tell it’s not his first 80.

It was however, his skiing companion, Archer’s first time at the race.

“I’m from Longford in Victoria and I generally get all my practice in on Lake Victoria near Loch Sport,” Archer said.

“Lakes are generally a lot rougher, but there were still moments where I felt a little nervous.”

As to who he wanted to see cross the finish line first during the Superclass event, Archer answered without a second thought.

“TR. I just love their boat,” he said.

An event for all ages, the little ones found entertainment at the jumping castle and at the Life Saving Victoria and SES tents.

The younger attendees made a beeline for the SES tent where they could get dressed up in gear and jump into a miniature truck, loaded with miniature tools.

Also popular among youngsters were the games at the Life Saving Victoria tent — which were not only fun, but promoted water safety.

Their attention was then drawn to the sky for an eye catching aerobatic display — which led to many excited screams erupting from the crowd.

The event is not all just about entertainment, it’s also all about ensuring safety on the water and on the surrounding banks.

A team of nine SES volunteers from Echuca, Swan Hill and Bendigo set a stall up for themselves to educate and entertain attendees, but if any emergency situation were to arise, they would then immediately activate and respond to the crisis with their SES rescue boat.

SES community resilience coordinator for Loddon Tracey White said river conditions looked good, particularly after the floods.

“The amount of work that has been done by council and Parks to get this race going should absolutely be commended,” Ms White said.

“The Southern 80 event is always an important event for us, it enables members from different units to meet one another.

“Last year’s event actually helped us to get to know members that we then later collaborated with heavily during the floods.”

More than a dozen Moama Marine Rescue NSW volunteers assisted the SES, NSW Maritime and NSW Police with keeping the biggest water ski race in the world safe.

Marine Rescue volunteers were on board the Moama 20, Moama 10 and Xray 20 vessels, which all deployed from Marine Rescue state headquarters.

Locals were pleased to see the event pull a bigger crowd than last year’s Southern 80 weekend in May.

One shuttle bus driver mentioned to passengers that he had done about 80km on the Sunday alone just by doing the short circuit between the Victoria Park footy oval to the Victoria Park boat ramp.

It was only 1.30pm at that stage, so you can only imagine how many kilometres he must have racked up by the end of the day.

Perhaps it was the weather that inspired people to come out or maybe the fear of lockdowns has diminished.

But there is one thing for certain — it was high time the region received an economic injection like this.