Rangitata Irrigation Race

It was such a nice day today we decided to go to Geraldine for lunch, we intended to visit our son but they were out as well so we drove on to look at the huge irrigation ponds that are being developed towards Methven, they are not complete yet.
Driving on we noticed that the irrigation ditch along side the road was empty, but then came across this one that was full so we parked up to have a look.
The water is being feed from the Rangitata River, which in fact was quite a lot lower than where we stood, on another trip we will explore the intake.
Its very clever the way they form small weirs as in the first image to make the flow of the water go fast.
The middle image is where they let the water down into the water race below which is the last image this is the empty one we saw earlier. All very clever moving a lot of water quite quickly along a vast flat area.