FOR the first time in three years, the floodgates were officially opened at Lake Boga today.

''It's so exciting,'' one woman said to another as they watched water leaking through the gates and waited for the big moment.

The dozens of locals who had gathered to watch the spectacle cheered and applauded the rush of water as Goulburn-Murray Water planner/team leader Kyal Siebert and Torumbarry supervisor Ross Stanton started to manually wind up the three timber gates at 2.01pm.

''Faster, faster,'' shouted out one man.

Goulburn-Murray Water Torumbarry Irrigation Area assistant operations manager Peter Koetsveld said the decision to allow 10,000 megalitres of water to pour into the lake over the next few weeks followed heavy rain in Queensland and flooding in the upper reaches of the Darling River.

Some of that water is expected to reach Lake Victoria, which is a major storage for SA and Adelaide, reducing the volume of water required from the Murray River.

The water for Lake Boga has been ''borrowed'' from Kangaroo Lake via the Little Murray River and will be replaced by regular tributary flows from the Murray River.

Mr Koetsveld said it would probably take a few weeks for the lake to fill to the expected depth of about 1m.

He said the prospects of the lake reaching sufficient depth to allow water sports next summer had greatly increased.

''If this rainfall pattern continues I would be amazed if it wasn't (deep enough by then),'' he said.

''We've been waiting for this rain for so long.''

Almost nine years of drought has taken a major toll on the town's 700 residents and its once-thriving tourism industry, based on water sports and aquatic leisure pursuits.

The lake began to dry out completely in 2007 and in April last year thousands of people from across Australia turned out for ''The Greatest Dry Lake Bed Dinner'' in a bid to boost people's spirits with a commemorative event.

Until this week, the only water to reach the lake came from rainfall and 400 megalitres released when vandals damaged the gates. It vanished within days.

In a reminder of the drought that continues to grip north west Victoria, one motorist who stopped to see what the fuss was about, had to be pushed back onto Lakeside Drive after his car became bogged in dry sand.