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Groundwater Down Under

As a land of droughts and flooding rains and the driest inhabited continent on Earth, groundwater has been and will always be important to Australia. Aboriginal art and dreamings in Australia reveals the important cultural and spiritual significance of groundwater to Aboriginal people over tens of thousands of years; the popular Australian icon, the tin-bladed windmill pumping groundwater from beneath the hot dry land for stock, crops and people, is a stunning visual reminder of the importance of groundwater for Australia today. Groundwater provides more than 30% of Australia’s total water consumption—supporting agriculture, mining, industry, and water supplies in some cities and the outback—generating national economic activity in Australia worth in excess of $34 billion a year. In Australia, there are a myriad of current, pressing issues in which groundwater is crucial. Securing the Great Artesian Basin, the successful implementation of the Murray–Darling Basin (MDB) Plan, the impacts of unconventional gas and hydraulic fracturing on groundwater, mining, and proposals for the future development of Northern Australia are just a few of the important contemporary issues that require rigorous groundwater science, management, and policy. Australia has just been through the major, national, “millennium” drought, described by some as the worst Australian drought on record. Not coincidentally, the last decade saw one of the largest groundwater investment “booms” in our nation’s history. The $105M National Groundwater Action Plan supported many groundwater projects throughout Australia and, through co-funding with the Australian Research Council (ARC), the birth of the National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training (NCGRT).