Rivers, tanks and aquifers
Murray–Darling politics at kitchen-table scale, tanks that do not breed mosquitoes, and creeks that still remember rain.
A dry-climate garden does not have to be gravel and a single sculptural agave. Hydrozoning, mulch, honest plant choices and a tank can keep a backyard looking inhabited through a restriction summer, without pretending the hose is a climate strategy.
Frances Okonkwo · 8 September 2024 · 10 min read
Stormwater does not vanish when it reaches a grate. It becomes a concrete creek, a litter pulse, a nutrient argument and, in a few lucky channels, a place that still holds platypus. Daylighting, traps and water-sensitive design are how a suburb admits the rain is still its problem.
Frances Okonkwo · 17 August 2024 · 10 min read
The Great Artesian Basin is not an underground lake waiting to be tapped. It is old water held in rock, feeding bores, mound springs and an inland pastoral life, now argued over by miners, gas fields and the long job of capping what should never have been left to run.
Frances Okonkwo · 20 July 2024 · 10 min read
A tank is not a plastic barrel you forget after the plumber leaves. First-flush, mosquito mesh, pumps, roof metal and state plumbing rules decide whether the water is a garden gift or a warm, neglected hazard. This is the household version, without the panic or the brochure.
Frances Okonkwo · 13 June 2024 · 10 min read
The Murray–Darling is not a distant irrigation argument. It is the catchment that fills Adelaide's glass in a dry year, keeps Broken Hill on a pipeline, and decides whether a river still looks like a river. Here is the basin in householder language.
Frances Okonkwo · 1 May 2024 · 10 min read