What comes to mind for most people when thinking of the outback? It is an image of a parched landscape featuring dusty, rocky expanses dotted with sparse vegetation. It is a terrain characterised by aridity and where finding water is nothing less than miraculous. However, as some of Australia’s foremost scientific authorities claim, the outstanding feature of the outback is not to be found in the terrain above ground. It is a hidden underground world of water covering an area of more than 1.7 million sq km.
In other words, this underground ocean has an area which is larger than that of Alaska itself. The Great Artesian Basin is one of the biggest subterranean sources of fresh water around the world. Lying underneath regions such as Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia, and the Northern Territory, this giant, layered construction consists of sandstone and age-old waters. Although you cannot see it from an aeroplane, this “ocean” provides the necessary conditions for the existence of life in the dry, rusty interior of the Australian continent.
