A "tampered with" control gate in an irrigation system appears to be the main factor in a mysterious sequence of events which led to the flooding of a Wanaka house on Monday.
The Queenstown Lakes District Council called in the Wanaka police to investigate why a stream of water began flowing through the property of John and Tina Pannett on Monday afternoon.
An irrigation stream fed by a water race originating from the Cardrona River, on a farm run by Mike Scurr, was discovered to be the upstream source of the flooding event.
Mr Scurr said he was contacted by the Wanaka police and it appeared a control gate on his property had been tampered with.
No-one knows who was responsible for opening the water-race gate.
The open control gate released a full flow of water from the Cardrona River down a 5km-long irrigation scheme, which flows through the Meadowstone suburb into Lake Wanaka.
The water race feeds into a series of irrigation channels.
At this time of year, the stream is usually dry with all of the channels closed off.
Mr and Mrs Pannett were contacted by the QLDC on Monday afternoon and later discovered the sunken lounge in their house was under more than 10cm of water.
A huge pool of water had collected behind their property and flowed through the grounds of their insured Meadowstone house.
A small collapsed dam - assumed to be the work of children - was also found upstream of the collected pool of water and is thought to have contributed to the flooding.
