The Water Beneath the Drought

In the 1880s, Australian settlers in the parched Queensland outback faced a brutal irony. Their cattle were dying. Their wells had gone dry. The red earth cracked under relentless sun. Yet beneath their feet, pressurized water filled an underground basin stretching across 660,000 square miles — the Great Artesian Basin, one of the largest freshwater reserves on the planet. The water was already there.…