The Lake Eildon Rowing Club quickly attracted many donations of boats and rowing equipment from many generous clubs from around Victoria and Australia. We grew our fleet and currently have 30 plus boats at our disposal including singles, doubles, quads and eights. In the early days four rowing machines and a large trailer were purchased by Mario to teach beginners how to row and to store the boats. A local businessman offered to let us use his gym at Taylor Bay for training on the rowing machines and the Outdoor education Group based out of Eildon let us lease some land free of cost to store our boats. We were still about 5km from the water and needed to transport the boats to and from the lake. Toorak College donated a small trailer and we used that trailer to take boats to the lake each time we wanted to go for a row. We taught a group of beginners to scull and we rowed once a week out of the Spillway carpark in Lake Eildon. In 2024 Mario became a permanent teacher at Seymour Secondary College and started a rowing program with Lake Eildon boats at the school. We had a selection of the best students from year 9 and 10 attend the program over three days and try out the sport in 2025 we teamed up with Nagambie Rowing Club to continue offering the program to our students. Rowing teaches kids the value of discipline, hard work and working together to achieve a common goal while having fun at the same time and we want to continue to grow this offering. We use a selection of beginner boats that had to be stored at a local farmers hay shed temporarily.

Our community grew steadily attracting rowers from Melbourne who wanted to support our young club and loved the opportunity to row in a beautiful new setting. In 2024 we held a training day that attracted more than 30 participants in single sculls and we rowed on Eildon Pondage. in 2025 the event became The Grand Ponderosa Cup, a 4 km head race around Eildon Pondage for single scullers followed by a 500 meter race. The event was well attended and we had the full support of Rowing Victoria umpires who ran the Regatta. Due to the increasing costs of running a regatta , the club lost money in the process, which highlights the need for extra funding going forwards. We have sought the support of the local Murrindindi council who have approved two grants over the last couple of years that have helped us make this event possible. We currently are seeking the help of the rowing community to raise enough funds to build a shed to house our boats on the banks of Lake Eildon so we are able to establish a more permanent base on the lake to run our programs and future events.