planned. The gates formed part of State Highway 6 until December 2017, when a larger $22 million replacement bridge was completed. Water Conservation Order A water conservation order was set up in March 1997, seven years after the minister of conservation first applied for an agreement to prevent hydroelectric dams from being built in the Kawarau river or its tributaries. The Order covers the stretch of river from the Lake Wakatipu control gates to Scrubby Stream. Fish and Game has sought an amendment to the Water Conservation Order to prevent any damming of the Nevis River and to seek conditions on changes to the minimum flows. Adventure tourism The first European to visit the area was Nathanael Chalmers, who was guided inland by Chiefs Reko and Kaikoura in 1853. Reko and Kaikoura showed Chalmers the rock bridge at Roaring Meg, which was the only place that the Kawarau River could be crossed, and returned him down the river on a , a flax reed open kayak. In 1910, 57 years after the event, Nathanael Chalmers remembered his boat trip through the Cromwell Gorge: ‘I shall never forget the “race” through the gorge ... my heart was literally in my mouth, but those two old men seemed to care nothing for the current.’ More recent tourist adventure activities on the river include riverboarding, jet boating, white water rafting, river surfing, and bungy jumping. The Kawarau Gorge Suspension Bridge, above the river, and a Category I historic place, is the site of the world's first commercial bungy jumping operation. Eastburn Station gave up the plus that forms the natural backdrop as a reserve. The Kawarau is the largest volume river commercially rafted in New Zealand, with an average flow of at Chards Road measuring station. The four significant commercially used rapids on the river are Smiths Falls, Twin Bridges, Do Little Do Nothing and the Chinese Dog Leg. Below these are the dangerous Nevis Bluff, Citroen and Roaring Meg sections. Because of the danger Waitiri Station usually declines access. In popular culture The Kawarau featured as a setting for the Argonath in the 2001 motion picture, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The Kawarau appeared on the finale of the Israeli reality show HaMerotz LaMillion 1. Frederick John Cato of the firm Moran & Cato, was a teacher from Invercargill, New Zealand, where he met and married Frances