The Lake Eyre Basin is the last big free-flowing desert river system in the world.
But will it be lost in the gas industry's last dash for cash?
About once a decade the hot dry deserts of central Australia are nourished by water.
Flooding rains in Queensland, the Northern Territory and South Australia flow into channels, creeks and rivers, spread across vast flood plains and eventually make their way into the vast ephemeral inland lake Kati Thanda, or Lake Eyre.
The area, once desolate, bursts into a discombobulating cocktail of life.
A plethora of invertebrates and plants that have sat dormant for years spring from the sand, becoming food for fish and birds, which flock to the lakes, swamps and rivers, and breed in their millions.
For the vast region that drains into Lake Eyre — the Lake Eyre basin — and the communities and ecosystems that rely on it, it's either boom or bust.
And right now, it's definitely boom.
Mithaka man and traditional owner Josh Gorringe, who lives in Windorah in Western Queensland in the north-east of the Basin, said the life after the floods "is what amazes me the most".
"It can go from this dry, almost bare dirt to vibrant green grass," he said.
"The birdlife booms again and even people's spirits lift again."
But Mr Gorringe said the delicate balance that sustained the country as it swung from boom to bust was being put at risk by a push from the oil and gas industry.
"The mines are the biggest threat that we've got at the moment," Mr Gorringe said.
"The coal seam gas that's been approved across the flood plains, you're talking roads going in places where they've never had roads before."
Australia has committed to reduce its net greenhouse gas emissions to zero in less than three decades, but despite this, a possible expansion to the industry's footprint could mean centuries of impact on the system, Mr Gorringe said, in return for just a few decades of profits.
The gas industry argues that it's existed in the Lake Eyre basin since the 1980s without interrupting the pristine waterways there, as well as bringing billions of dollars into Australia.
But new research shared with the ABC has uncovered its impact, and suggests the future of the basin could be threatened.
Richard Kingsford, from the University of New South Wales, has spent most of his career studying the area.
He's led new research into the extent of the oil and gas industry's footprint on its fragile flood plains which hasn't been fully known -- until now.
According to Professor Kingsford, the industry's impact is "dreadful" but more worrying, he said, is what lies ahead.
In the coming decades, gas produced through unconventional techniques like fracking and horizontal drilling could match what has been produced in the past from conventional methods, according to the CSIRO.
That would generate lucrative profits for gas companies and create jobs. But at what cost, asks Professor Kingsford.
Such unconventional gas methods, he said, could have a much bigger impact on the environment, meaning the expansion would more than double the industry's impact.
"The plans [in place show] exploration of unconventional gas across more than four and a half million hectares of flood plain in the Lake Eyre Basin," he said.
Looking across the flood plain, he said: "We're never going to get this back."
Cutting up the flood plains
In a remote part of South Australia, near the border with Queensland and New South Wales, lies the internationally recognised and protected Coongie Lakes Ramsar Site.
Within it is Embarka Swamp: a wetland that floods and dries almost annually, supporting a rich ecosystem.
It's protected under the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, and is part of the larger Coongie Lakes area.
According to the Commonwealth government's description, Embarka Swamp "can support the full suite of waterbird functional groups."
And indeed, standing on its banks, Professor Kingsford is struck by the diversity of bird life there and immediately spots what he says is Australia's rarest duck: the freckled duck.
"Water brings incredible life to this place," he said. "And once you've got that, it's just magnificent,"
But in the 1980s the area was altered. Santos discovered oil and began drilling. It built large raised roads and raised platforms, through which it drilled oil and created gas wells.
Eventually it fracked — a process that forces high-pressure water, sand and chemicals into the rock to help extract the oil and gas.
Now the wetland is cut up by a network of massive roads built up metres above the flood plain, well pads and ageing fossil fuel infrastructure.
Parts of the swamp are now buried under the infrastructure. But Professor Kingsford says the biggest worry is how that infrastructure affects the rest of the wetland area that isn't buried.
"Everywhere a big road dissects and moves that water, it moves it into places it shouldn't go. It moves it and stops it going into other places," he said.
"You think about all of those plants and animals that are waiting for that water to arrive. That road stops that water getting there and shifts it somewhere else, and so they'll die. It's as simple as that."
According to Professor Kingsford it's no idle worry.
While a government report released last year found impacts of gas development in the most prospective part of the Lake Eyre Basin — the Cooper Basin — could be mitigated by existing regulations, Professor Kingsford disagreed.
In the peer-reviewed paper shared with the ABC, Professor Kingsford and his colleagues said the developments would "inevitably affect flow and flooding".
His team analysed satellite imagery and found the water was not spreading evenly on either side of the roads, despite efforts by Santos to allow that spread.
He said that meant water wouldn't get to parts of the flood plain that needed it and there was potential for pollution of the landscape.
So much of the infrastructure goes underwater in big floods, he said, that anything spilled or stored there could be washed downstream.
The research paper concluded the development also "inevitably" carried pollution risks as the chemicals used in fracking "mix with the natural flows".
Santos declined an interview request, and didn't answer a series of questions put to it.
The current impact
Professor Kingsford and his colleagues wanted to see how widespread the sort of infrastructure seen in the Coongie Lakes is across the broader fragile floodplains of the Lake Eyre Basin.
They got maps of the region, and cut out all the terrestrial ecosystems; the areas that don't flood regularly.
Then they examined the flood plains to see how much development there was.
He found 831 well pads on flood plains across the basin — raised platforms through which a gas well is drilled, and then extracted.
And those pads are joined together by more than 1,000km of roads built through the flood plains.
The greatest concentration of that development was in the Coongie Lakes Ramsar site.
Despite its protection under international law, Professor Kingsford's research found only eight developments were referred for potential assessment under federal environment laws, and only one was required to undergo a full environmental assessment.
That is despite more than 280 wells being drilled and nearly 900km of roads being built in it.
Asked about this, federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said: "The developments in question began under previous governments."
"Currently there is a lack of trust in our environmental laws, including the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act," she said.
She said the government would reform the federal environment laws, first by responding fully to a review conducted by the previous government.
Professor Kingsford wanted governments to take more action to protect wetlands.
"And that means keeping these industries out of the flood plain," he said.
The Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association (APPEA), represents the gas industry in Australia. It declined to comment.
Santos, which owns and operates the sites visited by the ABC as well as other gas operations in the Lake Eyre Basin, also declined to comment.
But in earlier statements, APPEA has said the Lake Eyre Basin was the source for 15 per cent of Queensland's gas supply and was a significant economic benefit for Australia. It noted the region had a large potential for further development.
The future
Standing on the land that has been home to his people for tens of thousands of years, Mithaka man Josh Gorringe said the governments of today had a choice.
"They can either be the government that totally and utterly destroys the channel country and the Lake Eyre Basin forever," he said.
"Or they can be the government that stops it from happening and protects it for forever."
Although the Basin is spread over four states, much of the gas industry's focus is on Queensland's sections.
In 2005, the then-Labor Queensland government introduced the Wild Rivers Act, which offered some protections for the Lake Eyre wetlands in Queensland.
It was torn up by the LNP government in 2014, with the then-Labor opposition sharply critical of the move.
Since then, the Palaszczuk Labor government has promised to return the protections that existed in the Wild Rivers Act, but has failed to do so.
Asked about this, Queensland's Environment Minister Meaghan Scanlon pointed to another promise the government made: to establish a stakeholder advisory group, which it has now done.
Without protections, Professor Kingsford said the Lake Eyre Basin would be transformed.
"There's a huge wave coming in terms of the impacts of oil and gas on this system," he said.
"The amount of development that's foreshadowed now in this catchment means [we] will no longer be able to say this is the greatest desert river system in the world."
For Mr Gorringe, it is a matter of life and death.
"This has always been home," he says.
"But without water, you know, you don't have people, [you] can't sustain life.
"Any damage to that water, well, it changes everyone's life forever."
Credits
Reporting: Michael Slezak
Additional reporting: Marty Smiley
Photography: Michael Slezak, Marty Smiley, Kerry Trapnell and Doug Gimesy
Videography: Billy Cooper
Editing and digital production: Nick Sas
