to be in better condition. Surface water and groundwater The Galilee Basin straddles the Great Dividing Range and encompasses the headwaters of seven major river basins. The Thompson river and Barcoo river of the Cooper Creek system, the Diamantina River, the Flinders River in the north-west, the Bulloo River in the south, and the Warrego River in the south-east. The subregion also extends across the Great Dividing Range to the east and north-east into the headwaters of the Fitzroy river basin and Burdekin river basin. It also includes two nationally important wetlands, Lake Buchanan and Lake Galilee. The Galilee Basin includes aquifers that are a part of the Great Artesian Basin. These large aquifers are utilised as a water supply across much the Galilee subregion and importantly form a significant part of the recharge zone. Some groundwater may also discharge to surface as springs or where hydrogeological conditions are favourable, discharge to major rivers. Water extraction and water budgets are detailed in the Great Artesian Water Resource Plan (2006), covering most of the Galilee subregion. This plan is unique in that it only applies to artesian water and connected sub-artesian water of the Great Artesian Basin, and does not include management plans for surface water. Geology There are numerous suggestions of the origin of the Galilee Basin. Vine (1976) proposed downwarping, however Evans (1980) have suggested pull-apart basin related to shearing. Jackson et al. (1981) has suggested the basin was created from the reactivation of basement faults and downwarping. De Caritat & Braun (1982) proposed Late Carboniferous compressional upthrust of the Anakie Inlier, creating a flexural topographic depression, followed in the Late Permian – Mid-Triassic by subduction of the oceanic plate to the east, which initiated the later development of the basin. Waschbusch et al. (2009) suggested the basin formed as a response to platform tilting caused by mantle corner flow. A review from Stewart (2011) identified an additional theory that the Galilee Basin began when crustal extension (Jericho and Denison events) during the Late Carboniferous – Early Permian reactivated older faults from underlying basins. According to I'Anson et al. (2017), total subsidence of ~2 km from the Carboniferous to the Late Cretaceous in the Galilee Basin was punctuated by two major exhumation events in the Triassic and Cretaceous. Sedimentation was initially restricted to fluvial sandstone, but later expanded to other depocentres during deposition of fluvial and lacustrine sediments. Tuff