The dry continent is home to massive groundwater resources, but we don’t even know how much freshwater rests right under our feet. Grahame Campbell FRSN is a tireless advocate for data-driven resource management, but when it comes to groundwater, we just don’t have the data. Despite spending billions on the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, Australia’s governments still don’t understand how the surface water ecosystems of the Murray and Darling rivers interact with the environment they flow on, though, and under.
Grahame Campbell, a long-time CIS friend, author, engineer and musician, joins us this week to discuss his current passion for properly managing Australia’s groundwater. We will also discuss his recent memoir Clarinets, Pipelines and Unforeseen Places: The Evolution of an Engineer. With backdrops including Australia, Iraq, USA, Trinidad, Indonesia and Bangladesh, Grahame journeyed through his career as a pipeline engineer meeting characters from Dizzy Gillespie and Mick Jagger to Rex ‘The Strangler’ Connor and Andrew Forrest.