But the work done to prepare the 152-page expression of interest submitted by the Waitaki District Council to the New Zealand National Commission for Unesco this week had already shown the "depth of story" in the area, council chief executive Fergus Power said.
The commission had called for submissions for the first time this year and though the project group met for the first time on January 30, a bid was possible due to the foundation built over nearly two decades by Duntroon-based Vanished World.
"Essentially, we have already been operating a geopark in Waitaki for 17 years," Mr Power said.
The bid included 101 sites of geological interest throughout the district - from Palmerston, up the coast to the Waitaki River mouth, up the Waitaki Valley - and had led to the first stages of what was now being called Waitaki Whitestone Geopark.
"Irrespective of whether we get Unesco Global Geopark status or not, what we've got now is a tourism product," Mr Power said.
"Unesco would be fantastic, but what the industry is saying to me at the moment is: `You've actually already achieved something that is remarkable here ... it's a waka, that so many tourism operators and others can now see a place on the waka for them. They've picked up their paddle and they're all paddling together. And they can see the picture. They can see how all this stuff joins together.
"The beauty of this is that it's impossible to do the geopark in one day."
The project's advisory group for the geopark bid included representatives from the council, Ngai Tahu, the Department of Conservation, Environment Canterbury, Forrester Gallery, North Otago and Otago museums, Vanished World, University of Otago, Tourism NZ, Tourism Waitaki, and the Waitaki Tourism Association.
Mr Power said if the bid was advanced by the New Zealand National Commission for Unesco at the end of May, a "full dossier" would need to be with the Unesco panel by November 30.
If all those stages went well, a Unesco geopark would not be likely before spring 2020 - and still a lot more work was required, including establishing legal protection for geosites.
And while the project had not yet been expensive, a yet-to-be-formed trust would have to secure external investment.
"Because of the speed that this has been done, not every knot has been tied," Mr Power said.
"This is actually painting a vision of where we're going. And people have bought into it, big time."
